When She Ran Away
by Lesera128
Summary: Brennan returns from Maluku, meets Booth at the coffee cart, and refuses to hear about Hannah because she has a confession of her own to make. Brennan runs, Booth follows, and angsty physicality ensues as the pair attempt to come to terms with what's happened to them. Set at the start of 6x01. AU. Complete.
1. Pt I: When She Ran Away

When She Ran Away

By: Lesera128 (with the help of _dharmamonkey_)

Rated: M

Disclaimer: I own nothing... Obviously. Just playing in someone else's sandbox for a bit.

Summary: "After seven months, she just randomly said 'I love you' and then ran away. I couldn't watch her leave again. I couldn't. And, so, I followed." Set at the start of 6x01. By reader request, a sequel to "What I Wish I Could've Said" - Ch 13: "That Time Brennan Called Booth On It." AU.

A/N: Okay, okay. I normally don't do this, but by popular request—and with the fantabulous help of the Booth-whisperer, _dharmamonkey_—here's a bit of angsty sex for those who wanted me to 'make it right', so to speak. I suppose this piece can be read by itself as a standalone, but it will probably make more sense if you've read the short intro in Chapter 13 of "What I Wish I Could've Said." This monster, spawned by an 1800-word one-shot, grew long enough so that it will be posted in two parts. Normal rules, exclusions, and warnings apply for the ensuing B&B smut that is to be found herein. As ever, proceed at your own risk... and enjoy!~

* * *

><p>Part I: When She Ran Away<p>

* * *

><p>There was a slight breeze on the Mall that late summer evening. It was unexpected after the heat of the day, the exhausting heat had been so stifling to all those visitors who had come to the Mall. Locals knew better than to venture out in the heat on days like that day. And, so it was usually only out-of-towners who braved the sweltering heat of the sizzling summer day, as the sun beat down on them relentlessly while they traversed the sacred place of holy secular republican memories and the cradle of American civic patriotism.<p>

But, now, at night, now there was a slight breeze that ruffled the eerily still water of the Reflecting Pool. It stirred the still water lightly, as if someone had stood over that one spot in DC, leaned down, and blew softly to cause the slow pattern that broke the glassy surface of the pool. Yes, that breeze fluttered over everyone who was on the Mall that night as sounds of the crickets chirping and other creatures that had begun to sing their nightly song combined with the sound of a rapidly pounding woman's broken heart. Soon, that beating of her heart was mixed with the sounds of her soft sobs as she cried salty tears of regret, loneliness, and desperation to be joined shortly by the impending scuffle of her feet on the concrete of her escape route once she had cast her final parting words of disbelief out into the night's ether.

"No!" Brennan said repeated, this time, more forceful, more insistent, but uncertain what to do but reiterate the logical facts her brain had categorized as an outcome of her actions.

_Cause and effect._

The words usually brought Brennan peace. But, now—tonight, _tonight_ they were her worst enemies. The cause she had hoped to initiate—telling Booth she loved him and wanted to be with him, hopefully initiating the effect of him smiling that smile of his at her, the grin that took her breath away—well, it never happened. It never would happen now, because she had been a fool, an idiot.

_I've been a fool, I've been an idiot, _the words echoed through Brennan's head as she tried to make sense of it all, analytical brain battling emotional heart to regain control of the situation. _I can't believe I was stupid enough to think that I could just expect him to wait for me until I was ready. It's been seven months. And, he told me he had to move on_—_so, of course, he did. He moved on, and he found someone, and her name is Hannah, and she's a journalist in Iraq, and if I didn't know anything more about her than that_—_and I don't_—_well, it's enough for me to hate her. God, he's moved on…he found someone, and I'm too late. _

Brennan stopped, immediately becoming hopelessly depressed at the thought, but then, a smaller, albeit sharper and more familiar, voice of hyper-rationalism set in as she thought, _Well, what did you expect, Brennan? He merely did what he said he was going to do. And, now it's too late. He's moved on, and it's not with you. You lost. You took a gamble, but because you waited, and your timing was off, you took a chance, and you failed. Your gamble didn't work. You lost. _

At those words, Brennan felt the maudlin nature of her thoughts creep away as another point jumped into the forefront of her conscious mind. _I may've lost, but someone else won. Yes, someone else won—won him—they won him, didn't they? _She stopped and paused for a few precious seconds, as she thought of the source of her pain, ruin, and utter disaster_: Hannah. God, I hate that name. I hate her. He's hers, and not mine, but... he was __supposed__ to be. He was supposed to be mine. I was supposed to come here tonight, and he was supposed to let me tell him, and then we were supposed to be together. I was finally ready to take a chance_—_take our chance…and, well, it looks like we did. But, I didn't win, we didn't win. We lost, and because he's not mine to tell him that I love him anymore, everything is wrong. He's not mine, will never mine— _

The surge of pain she felt at such a notion almost floored Brennan in its destructive capability as another realization then wrecked her. Oh,_ God... Booth? This...this isn't how he felt that night—that night in front of the Hoover, is it? Because, if it is—if this is this what I did to him... how can I deal with that? What kind of person am I to have hurt him like this?_ The thought that she had inflicted such pain on Booth made Brennan nauseous, and she almost wanted to pass out from the pain of it all. Oh,_ God, no_—_Booth, I'm sorry. So, sorry. If this is how I made you feel, it's no wonder you found someone else, that you moved on…how could you ever love me after I did something like that? How…? No… God, no…This is not how this was supposed to be… no, no, no_—

"I… this is not how this was supposed to be… not how it was supposed to go," Brennan repeated, taking a breath as she shook her head. But, because she knew she at least owed Booth the truth, she reluctantly raised her gaze to meet his. As soon as she did it, Brennan regretted the move. His brown eyes bore into hers, awash in a display of emotion that Brennan didn't, _couldn't_ understand. _Oh, God… he's angry at me? Is that it? I don't know how to tell what you're feeling anymore, Booth. And, there's a reason for that…because, you're not mine, and you never will be. I'm sorry, so sorry, but still_—_you deserve to know the truth. If I hurt you like this, if I hurt you in any way that's like this at all, then... well, I owe you. I owe you the truth—I owe you that much, at least, after everything I've done to you—and probably a whole hell of a lot more. So, here goes— _

"I-I… I came here tonight to tell you that I love you—"

Booth stared at her, almost as if she was speaking a foreign language, and he didn't think he'd heard what he thought he'd heard Brennan say.

"—and to apologize for what happened before we left—"

_Wait…what? No, she's not…she's not saying what I think she's saying? Couldn't be—right?_ Booth thought, as he watch Brennan struggling to get the words out. _She's not…she didn't…love? Did she just say that she loves me?_

"—and to see what would happen after all of that…"

_She…loves me? Did Bones just say she…loves…me? She loves me? She loves me. __She__ loves __me__…_ the thoughts swirled in Booth's mind.

"—but, if you've found someone else… if you've replaced me… then I-I… none of that matters anymore…I don't matter anymore," Brennan finally said in a strangulated voice that was barely louder than a whisper.

_She loves me_—_wait, what?_ Booth stopped, his head snapping around to search Brennan's face for some clue at to what was happening. She_ doesn't matter anymore? What? What is she saying? What…?_ The confusion and the rapid shifts in truth that Brennan was throwing at him were starting to be a bit much for Booth to process. Finally, managing _some _type of response, all he could barely manage was to look at her and call her name even though he was thinking much, much more at the time he spoke.

"Bones—" Booth repeated. _Stop. We need to just stop for a minute and just…stop. Please_—_stop._

Shaking her head, as soon as Booth saw the flash in her eye, he knew it for what it was because he had seen it before…on a night—a night that had been as cool and biting as this night was night was warm and mellow—on that night when she had broken his heart not quite 3/10 of a mile away from where they now stood. He knew that look, knew what it meant, and what she was going to do next. And, in that moment, Booth vowed that he wouldn't let it happen all over again.

_She's not…I can't…she's not doing this again_, Booth thought. _I can't…I can't watch her run away again. I can't do it. She's not... she can't do that again. Not again. Not to me, not to herself, not to us. It just can't happen. We can't. No. Not again._

And, as if Brennan were strangely echoing his words, albeit for a different reason, she snapped, "No!" As Booth had predicated, she suddenly felt the panic overwhelm her as she looked away from him, refusing to lift her eyes to meet his gaze. Clenching her fists, she shook her head fiercely, her ponytail swishing from side-to-side. "This was a mistake," she muttered.

Booth felt his own heart constrict painfully at the words: _a mistake_. _What, Bones? Telling me you love me? Do you regret it already? Is that the mistake?_

"I never should've come here…" Brennan said, although she didn't really answer Booth's unspoken question. "And, I can't do this anymore," she said softly, almost a sob as it came out of her mouth. And, then spinning on her heels, Brennan turned away from Booth and began to run as fast and as far away from him as her feet could carry her.

She'd made it approximately a hundred yards before Booth caught up to her. He hadn't bothered to call out her name—he knew, by that point, it wouldn't do anything to stop Brennan anyway. Trying to lessen the force of his body's hurtling impact on hers as much as possible without actually sacking her to the ground when they finally made contact, Booth still barreled into her hard as he caught her in his arms. Brennan, who had heard the heavy thud of his standard-issue combat boots on the Mall's concrete sidewalks echoing behind her, was running on pure adrenaline and instinct by the time he finally caught her.

For a second—just a split second—she thought her world was spinning as she felt his warmth jump off of him and pour into her, radiating as a type of electric pulse through the softly weathered, ripstop nylon material of his desert fatigues. She closed her eyes for that split second—just a short span for no longer than the single beat of a heart—as she let his scent wash over her in a way that she knew _would_ never happen again, _could_ never happen again. _Because, he's not mine, and now, he never can be, _Brennan thought sadly, as a coinciding sear of pain ripped through the middle of her chest, almost feeling as if she had been stabbed with a knife deeply into the middle of her thoracic cavity.

The pain jolted her away from her few seconds of self-indulgence, and Brennan immediately began to struggle.

"Let me go—" she begged. "Please, Booth. Please… Let me go—"

"Bones...stop, please..." he pleaded, his voice cracking as he tried to reason with her. "Stop."

"No—"

In that moment, feeling Brennan so warm and pliant in his arms, her familiar scent—some mixture of her sweat, her milk and honey shampoo, and her amber body wash—the same scent he'd spent months dreaming about until a strawberry scent had started to chip away at its place in his memory, Booth knew he wanted to kiss her. It was a purely self-indulgent instinct—the desire to put his mouth on hers and feel her lips against his own, and to kiss her with every ounce of feeling he had within him—

But, he couldn't help it. He wanted to kiss her, needed to kiss her badly—so very badly. And, Booth leaned in, almost pressing his lips to hers, before a small voice echoed in his mind, reminding him that this wasn't such a good idea. _You can't do that, _the voice whispered. _I know you want to, but you can't do that. Not right now, not yet. If you do, you'll scare her. You tried this once before, and you know what'll happen—she'll run again. _He gazed into her pale eyes, glistening brightly with tears under the moonlight, and he knew wherever that tiny voice inside his head had come from that it was right. And, more importantly, he suddenly knew what he had to do. _She needs to know she's safe with you, _the voice inside him said. _Be patient. _He remembered what Gordon Gordon had told him that night as they sat at the table in the middle of his busy restaurant kitchen, the night before Booth's marksmanship requalification test. _"May I counsel patience on this front? Hope and patience." _Yes, he was then certain that he knew then what he needed to do.

And so he just held her.

Booth poured everything he had ever felt for her into that single embrace—the hope, longing, desperation, anger, fear, adoration, panic, attraction, frustration, sadness, hurt, rage, excitement, desire, and love that he felt for her into that one action. His grip tightened around Brennan so hard so that, for a few seconds, she couldn't breathe. She continued to struggle against him, the only thought in her mind being that she needed to get away.

_Run_, the single word continued to echo in her mind. She mentally chanted it almost as some type of prayer. _Run, run, run_,

"Please let me go," she whispered, the fight beginning to leak out of her. "Please…let me go."

"No," Booth insisted, although he loosened his grip a bit as she started to stop fighting him. "I can't—not until you let me explain."

"There's nothing to explain," Brennan replied sadly. "I just…please. Let me go."

"No."

"Booth, please—"

"No," he repeated, his voice growing stronger, more insistent. He emphasized his word with a squeeze of his arms around her chest. "No."

"Why?'

"Because," he said. "I…you can't…you just can't do that, Bones. You can't just tell me something like that and then run away."

"But, Booth, it doesn't matter anymore," Brennan said sadly. "It…it just, it doesn't matter anymore. So, please…please—Booth, please let me go."

"No," he insisted. "Not until…not until you let me explain."

Booth opened his mouth in that instant, thinking the words were going to pour forth like a deluge, letting forth everything he'd bottled up for months finally flow free as if in some great confession. But, when he tried to speak, he found he couldn't—all he could do was stare, stare at _her_. Her breathing was still rapid, coming in short breaths, as Brennan struggled to not start crying again. She was clenching her fists so hard underneath her arms that Booth knew her knuckles were turning white, her nails probably cutting into the soft flesh of her palms, and her beautiful blue eyes were red rimmed and puffy. And, so in that minute, when he needed more than anything to be able to speak, Booth found that he couldn't… and it nearly killed him.

Brennan stared at him for a minute, her head cocked expectantly, and then finally, with another breath, Booth slowly shook his head.

"I can't do this—"

"Then, why did you insist—" Brennan immediately began.

Giving her a curt wave of his hand, Booth then completed his sentence as he said, "I can't do this here—not…not in public with the whole world listening." He stopped and then said, "Can we go somewhere…private? To talk? So I can explain?" She held his gaze for a moment before he added, "Please?"

Brennan saw the pleading look in Booth's eyes, and as if she ever could've said 'no', she slowly nodded.

* * *

><p>They went back to her place, just because Booth hadn't been to his apartment in months, and Brennan at least knew that hers was clean and still had all the utilities connected since her father had stayed there, house-sitting for her in the months of her absence. Fortunately, Max Keenan had vacated the premises earlier that morning after he quickly checked in with Brennan, bought her lunch, and then gave her a kiss goodbye before telling her that he would be 'out of town seeing a few old friends' for a few days.<p>

Neither one of them had driven to the Mall, Brennan's blue Toyota Prius still in her apartment's underground garage and Booth's standard black Toyota Sequoia SUV not having been reassigned to him since his reinstatement to the FBI had not actually taken place yet, so they shared a cab ride back to her place. The pair let a heavy silence separate them as each sat as far away from the other as possible in the back of the cab, with Brennan even going so far as to press herself up against the passenger side door. The cabbie seemed oblivious to each of his fares' discomfort and hesitation, and he seemed quite content to be distracted by the alternative rock station that mocked Booth and Brennan with the lyrics of the song that pulsed through the cab's tinny speakers. The song was that was the only noise in the taxi besides each person's respective breathing.

_Cause I did enough to show you that I  
>Was willing to give and sacrifice<br>And I was the one who was lifting you up  
>When you thought your life had had enough<br>And when I get close, you turn away  
>There's nothing that I can do or say<em>

_So now I need you to tell me the truth_  
><em>You know I'd do that for you<em>  
><em>So why are you running away?<em>  
><em>Why are you running away?<em>

_Is it me, is it you_  
><em>Nothing that I can do<em>  
><em>To make you change your mind<em>  
><em>Is it me, is it you<em>  
><em>Nothing that I can do<em>  
><em>Is it a waste of time?<em>  
><em>Is it me, is it you<em>  
><em>Nothing that I can do<em>  
><em>To make you change your mind<em>

The three-minute cab ride seemed like an interminable span in purgatory. For each of them, it seemed like a period that had stretched on forever, with neither one of them sure when it would end, or, more importantly, what they would do when they finally could act. But, at last, they arrived in front of Brennan's building and made their way up to her apartment. As soon as they entered, climbing the stairs wordlessly, Brennan moved slowly and with unusual hesitation in a clear display of pain and anxiety that shredded Booth's heart. Locking the door behind them, she flipped on the lights and dropped her bag carelessly on the floor. Nodding to him, she bit her lip for a minute before she said, "Okay. We're here. In private. So, please—say what you need to say and leave."

_Leave_. The single word, the one that she had said with so much raw emotion and such a sense of finality conveyed in a single syllable. It was enough to make him hurt all over. _Leave_, Booth thought. _That's what she said. Explain and then leave. But, how do I do that…?_

The question trailed off in Booth's mind, and rather than struggle for an answer to a question that he didn't know how to deal with, he took a breath and began to speak.

"Hannah," he began, for lack of a better place to start. As soon as the syllables escaped his lips, he regretted beginning that way.

Brennan winced at that, the single word he uttered. Booth took a step towards her out of sheer instinct. She remained resolute in her bearing and shook her head slowly. "Please," she whispered. "Don't—"

"Bones, listen," Booth began. "I want you to understand." He watched her pale, red-rimmed eyes well up again with tears. "I have to…Hannah and I—"

"I do understand," Brennan said, her tears—despite her best efforts and promise to herself that she wouldn't start crying again, failing miserably to hold herself together—dribbling down her cheeks anew. "I do understand, Booth. There's no need for you to provide details. You…and this…Hannah. You met someone. You liked each other, and embarked on a mutually beneficial relationship. I get it. You love Hannah, and so there's no room—that is to say, I'm now superfluous. I'm no longer necessary. I've been replaced—"

Unconsciously, Booth ran a hand over his close-cropped hair in a way he hadn't done in many months, because only Brennan elicited such exasperation in him. "Bones...I-I...Hannah...it's not..." He swallowed, agonizing over his words as he tried desperately not to hurt her.

"You don't have to explain, Booth," Brennan said sadly. She tilted her head at him and said, "I know. I…I-I missed my chance. I'm too late, and for that…I'm sorry. I…I won't bother you again. I won't bring it up again. From this point on, I will endeavor to keep things on a strictly professional level so as not to impede your relationship with Hannah or overstep my boundaries—"

"Stop it," Booth suddenly snapped, lifting his head suddenly, his jaw suddenly tight as a brief flicker of anger lit up his eyes. The movement startled Brennan, and he instantly regretted the action. Taking a breath, he softened his tone before he tilted his head to the side and said, "You said you'd let me explain, Bones. So, please…_let me explain_."

Slowly, although she had to bit her bottom lip to keep from speaking, Brennan nodded her head.

Booth nodded in response and took another breath before he willed the words to come out this time, praying he could say what he needed to tell her in the way he needed to say it at that exact moment.

"Look," Booth began. "You've got to understand...seven months, Bones, seven months went by and I heard nothing from you. Not one word. Not one letter. Not one email. Not one phone call. Nothing."

"I tried," Brennan said quietly. She nodded at him. "I wrote dozens of letters and tore them all up. I composed an email to you every other day I was in Maluku and deleted each one of them. I tried… wanted to call you, but, somehow, I… I-I just couldn't dial the last number," she said.

He looked at her, not used to the unfettered honesty that he saw in her face. Deciding the only way he could reciprocate was by continuing in his explanation, he said, "I was in a war zone, Bones, getting shot at, having the men under me shot at, watching men bleed to death in the sand. Watching men die at the other end of my rifle scope. And…all of it—well, I knew what it would be like going in because I'd been to war before, and I knew it would be hell. But, I hurt, Bones. I really hurt." He swallowed hard again, the memory of those painful months raining over him as he spoke. "I hurt more than I ever thought I would, Bones...because I felt I was all alone."

He paused, stopping for a moment as the loneliness in which he'd been lost for those first few months washed over him, the desperation and negativity of that time overwhelming him as he relived the memory. "God, you have no idea what it was like—how alone I felt for the first few months. As hard as I knew it was going to be before I went, I had no idea how bad it would actually be once I actually got there because—well, because I had to do it without you. One second you were in my life, and the next second you were gone. I felt… I felt like an amputee, Bones. Like someone had cut away the best part of me, and it was suddenly gone. For a while, I didn't know what to do or how to deal with things aside from simply going through the motions. I… I-I was lonely. So lonely. My best friend didn't write, she didn't call, nothing—"

Booth's voice grew thick with emotion as he suddenly said, in a very low tone, "When you—when I never heard from you... I-I thought I didn't matter to you anymore. I thought… that was it. We were done. And, I felt so horribly alone and so abandoned, Bones. I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. I felt so alone. Afghanistan is a living hell, Bones. A living, God-forsaken hell on earth. And, all around me was death and pain, and the one person who made me feel like I was worth anything, who made me believe I could do anything I set my mind to—she was suddenly gone." He snapped his fingers for emphasis. "I was lonely and hurting and...I thought surely that no one would ever want me, that no one would ever love me...so…when Hannah came...yeah, I—it was as if I suddenly didn't have to feel so badly anymore. She was fun and attractive and vibrant and there and… and, she wanted me, Bones." Booth chewed his lower lip and closed his eyes. "She wanted me when I thought no one would ever want me."

He stopped in that moment, unaware that a tear had escaped his eye and run down his cheek in the middle of his emotional confession. Shaking his head slightly, Booth said, "She was there, and Hannah wanted me, and I was lonely, and because I thought it was better to have _something _than nothing, _someone _than no one, when…when she pursued me? Well, I…I didn't resist, Bones. I didn't say no. She wanted to be with me, and so I let myself be with her, and she filled a part of the hole in my heart, the hole in my life." He stopped and then looked up at her. "Can you understand any of that?" he asked in a broken voice. Booth gazed at her intently, forcing her to maintain their connection as he tried to make her see what happened through his eyes.

Swallowing slowly, Brennan nodded. "Yes." She paused, stopped, and nodded again. "Yes, I think I understand."

Letting out a large sigh of relief, Booth said, "Oh, God. Good, I didn't think—"

"It's my fault," Brennan interrupted him suddenly. "I understand that, Booth. My actions beginning the night when I hurt you in front of the Hoover Building, and in the period that continued until you met me at the airport before I departed for Maluku, everything that happened in between those two points in time happened because I hurt you. I couldn't—I wasn't ready to give you the answer I needed to give you, and so I brought this upon myself. If you had never felt any of those emotions, never had any of those responses while you were deployed, you never would've acquiesced to Hannah's overtures. So, I understand and accept responsibility for the consequences of my actions."

Booth felt as if she had physically punched him in the gut as hard as she could. Suddenly finding it difficult to breathe, Booth could only shake his head. "God, Bones—no…"

"It's my fault," Brennan repeated. "And, so if that's the only thing that you needed to explain, it's not necessary, Booth. I fully understand what culpability I bear in the course of the events that transpired to bring us here tonight."

And, instantly, in that moment, Booth didn't know how to get Brennan to stop with any words he could think to say. He didn't know how to get her to stop, just stop for a minute so that he could make her understand, _really _understand. But, when he saw the tears flowing down her face again, her cheeks already wet with a series of crisscrossed streaks, he moved and quickly closed the space between them.

He pulled her towards him, and Booth didn't stop to think as he tilted his head to reach for her lips. He felt her lips, so soft and warm, brush against his as a small sigh escaped from her barely-parted lips. For a moment, he hesitated, his heart and mind both racing as his mouth hovered over hers. He reached his hand up to cup her jaw, his fingers curling under her ear as he closed the distance between them. He pressed his lips against hers and felt her lips move against his as he moaned softly into her mouth. Booth felt the ground spin beneath his feet as her lips grasped at his, hesitantly at first and then, after a few moments, more desperately.

"Bones," he whispered as their lips parted between kisses.

For a second or two, he opened his mouth to speak, but lost his nerve—or, more likely, lost himself in the knee-melting sensation of feeling her lips on his again after so long.. _God, she feels...she tastes...so good, _he told himself as he felt himself drawn into another kiss. _Like I remembered. _Booth stopped in that minute, and then quickly, he shook his head as he realized that this kiss was different from all the others, and so, while there was a hint of familiarity, in some ways, this kiss was unlike all the others. It was a new baseline established by this new experience in a world where they both loved each other. _I love her. I've always loved her. I've never stopped loving her. I always will love her, and I need to tell her that—s__o, this is better than I remember, _Booth thought. _So much better than that. Even better._

"Bones," he said again, stroking his thumb across her cheek as he pulled away again as he made good on his recent vow. "I love you, Bones," he whispered breathlessly, his lips hovering near her ear. "I _love _you."

Booth closed his eyes and moved to kiss her again, his heart skipping a beat as she brought her lips to his, a scarcely audible sigh passing between them as she pressed her mouth to his.

"No, you don't—"

"Yes, I do," Booth whispered. "I love you. I never stopped loving you—I couldn't. I don't think I know how even if I really wanted to—I love you."

Brennan couldn't help herself as she allowed her lips to part and her tongue to seek out his in a desperate search for completion. Intertwining her arms behind his neck, she pulled him closer to her as she felt her head going light from both a lack of oxygen and her brain feeling short-circuited as the emotion overwhelmed her. Indeed, she felt as if she were being overwhelmed by the tornado of emotions that had picked her up and spun her around to the dizzying heights she now felt as her feet threatened to give out underneath her.

But, then, as so often is the case, rationality chose _that _inopportune moment to rear its ugly head. Suddenly, she felt a stab of pain as she knew what was happening wasn't right.

_Not mine_, a part of her whispered. _You can't do this because he's not yours, Brennan. He belongs to someone else. It's not right. Stop. Stop it right now_—

Reluctantly, Brennan made a half-hearted attempt to pull away.

"I can't—" she groaned into his mouth. "We can't. It's...it's not right."

Pulling away slightly, Booth looked at her with a clearly confused look on his face. "I love you."

"Yes—"

"You love me—"

"I..."

"You _love _me," Booth repeated.

"Yes—" Brennan said weakly.

"Then, why can't we?' Booth said. "I want to. I assume you want to." A vague smile appeared on his face, then vanished again as his eyes traced over the taut expression that clung to her face. "So, what's the problem here, Bones? What am I missing?"

Slowly, Brennan breathed a single word, as if it were the most taboo and hated word in all of the history of human speech. "Hannah."

Realization dawning, Booth chuckled, immensely relieved at her confession. "Oh, God. For a minute there I thought you were gonna say—"

"But, Hannah," she said, interrupting him again, shaking her head in confusion herself this time.

"No," Booth whispered before he leaned in again as he began to kiss her once more. Knowing that she needed some type of explanation if they were ever going to get past the stage of just kissing as he so desperately hoped they would. _And soon, too_, he thought with a subtle shift of his hips as he felt himself get harder with each passing second. "Hannah," Booth began through his kisses. "Look, Hannah is nice, a good person, but—"

"Which is why you're with her now," Brennan said, a half-moan, a half-whimper. "That's why you're with her now, and not with me. And, why you're not mine, Booth, why you'll never be mine. And, I know I've got to accept that, but I can't do that if you keep kissing me like that—"

Gently lifting her chin with his hand, he looked at her, his eyes shining brightly as he smiled. "God," he said, "for such a brilliant fucking scientist, you can be an incredibly stupid person sometimes."

Brennan's brow furrowed in confusion. "I don't—"

"I'm not Hannah's," Booth said, pushing his lips to her neck. "Never was, never will be. Only yours, Bones."

"But—"

"Look," Booth said, sighing a bit as he had to stop to waste time talking about a woman that he'd left on the other side of the world with only a minor pang of regret when the thought of the woman who he was returning home to loomed large in front of him. "Hannah... what she and I had, Bones? It was casual. Fun, passionate, sexy, and it served it's purpose. But, when I left, she didn't ask me to wait, and I didn't ask her to come. We parted on good terms. But, we parted. Do you understand that?"

"Are you saying," Brennan began slowly. "Are you saying that you're... you're not with Hannah in a relationship anymore?"

"No," Booth said, shaking his head. "That's done. Over with—"

"Then, why did you want me to see her photo?" Brennan asked.

And, suddenly, Booth deflated a bit as he realized the pettiness of his earlier intended action. "Oh," Booth said. "That."

"Yes," Brennan nodded. "That."

Taking a breath, Booth said, "Honestly, Bones? I thought when we came back here you'd have stories for me about some super genius squint that you fucked for seven months in Machoochoo or so random scuba diver you hooked up with who could hold his breath for five minutes, and I—" Booth paused stopped, and shook his head slowly as he said, "I didn't want to have to face that with having something of mine own to brag about—"

"I didn't sleep with anyone in Maluku," Brennan said slowly. "It was only you, Booth. Every day, every night, for seven months. The only man in my life—in my heart, in my mind... it was you. Just you."

Nodding, Booth said, "I know that, now. But, Bones, I had no way to know that—and, God, I'm sorry. That was a dickish thing to do—"

"Don't apologize," Brennan said softly. "I've done much, much worse to you."

His head snapping up at her words, Booth drew back in that minute and said, "Did you say that you love me?"

Swallowing nervously, Brennan nodded slowly. "Yes."

"And, just so there's no confusion here, Bones, because this is kinda really important." He raised his eyebrows expectantly. "Are you sure?" Booth asked.

Again, Brennan nodded. "Yes."

"Yes, what?"

"Yes," Brennan repeated. "I love you."

"God," Booth said, closing his eyes for a minute and smiled before he reopened them and looked at her with a toothy grin on his face. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting for you to say that to me."

"But—"

"But, nothing, Bones—"

"But, Hannah—"

"No," Booth said, pulling her against him. "That's over. Done. Finito. In the past, where it belongs, because I don't love her, Bones, I couldn't…I never could, not the way I love you. Not the way I've always loved you." He stopped and then said, "I love you—you do know that, don't you?"

"But, I don't understand," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "How can you still feel that way after the last seven months? After everything's that's happened? How I hurt you that night? How can you still feel that way about me after Afghanistan and Hannah—"

"I love you, Bones," Booth repeated. His hands slid underneath her shirt and greedily inched up and down the soft skin of her back. Brennan shivered against his touch as he murmured, "Never mind Afghanistan." He leaned into her until their foreheads met. "Never mind the seven months," he said. "Never mind the night at the Hoover. None of it matters because I love you, Bones. You're the only one I've ever loved."

Brennan shivered in that minute, as she tried to process the meaning of the words and the sensations she was feeling. In the end, it was too much for her, and all she could focus on was his one statement.

_You're the only one I've ever loved._

At that thought, the thing that had been threatening to happen to Brennan finally did occur when her knees gave out. Wobbly, she fell against Booth, who caught her with a look of askance clear in his eyes.

"You okay there, Bones?"

She looked up at him and shook her head. "No."

His eyes narrowing in concern, Booth tilted his head at her and said, "What can I do to make it better?"

"Us," Brennan said instantly. "I need to know that this is real, Booth. That words...words, they can be ephemeral, right? So, I need...I _need _you." She nodded once and then added, "_I _need _you_,"

Bringing a hand up to her cheek, Booth caressed it gently as he said, "You've got me."

"I know that," Brennan said. "A part of me does, I know. But, I need more than just words."

He inclined his head at her as he asked, "Are you saying what I think you're saying, Bones?"

Laughing lightly, mostly because she was nervous about being rejected when she was so close to finally getting what she so desperately craved and terrified that he'd push her away, Brennan said, "Since I'm unable to read your mind, Booth, you're going to have to verbalize what the true intent behind your query is—"

"You said you needed me," Booth began.

Brennan nodded.

"Need me to do what?" Booth asked, finally laying the words down like playing cards on the table before them. He felt faint for a moment as he thought of all the wagers he'd taken over the years, and how many of them left him empty and defeated. But, his pulse quickened as he hoped this would be the one gamble that, after nearly losing it all that night in front of the Hoover, would finally have a jackpot payout.

"I believe the correct term would be to have sex, Booth," Brennan began. Booth looked at her, interest mixed with curiosity on his face, but he remained quiet, causing her to clarify her statement. "Other modifiers would be intercourse, coitus...or, if you prefer more urban colloquialisms...bang, tap, fuck—" she stopped, and then a softer and more gentle look coming onto her face. "Or," she said slowly. "Make love?"

* * *

><p>-TBC-<p>

* * *

><p><span>AN2: Okay… so, I know that's a very cruel place to leave every one as far as a cliffhanger. So, the bad news is, it's an evil cliffie. But, the good news is, the second part (i.e., the hot angsty!sex smut) is already written (_dharmamonkey's_ seen it, so she can vouch for me). So, if you want to see it, post a review. Lurkers, come forth out of the shadows and into the bright sunlight of review-land. Speak, let your voices be heard. We love reviews, and we would love to hear what you think. So, let us know how we did, and remember...

More Reviews = Happy Writers = Exciting Posting of Part II's Sexy Conclusion in Very Short Order.

So, yes, this is a form of blackmail, but hopefully, it'll be worth it. :)~


	2. Pt II: When He Caught Her

When She Ran Away

By: Lesera128 (with the help of _dharmamonkey_)

Rated: M

Disclaimer: I own nothing... Obviously. Just playing in someone else's sandbox for a bit.

Summary: "After seven months, she just randomly said 'I love you' and then ran away. I couldn't watch her leave again. I couldn't. And, so, I followed." Set at the start of 6x01. By reader request, a sequel to "What I Wish I Could've Said" - Ch 13: "That Time Brennan Called Booth On It." AU.

A/N: So, the feedback on Part One was overwhelming—even if someone of you didn't like the blackmail. But, as one astute reviewer pointed out—in the words of Brennan, I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to like it. ::evil grin:: Many, many, _many _thanks to those de-lurkers who chimed in from the darkness to share their thoughts on the chapter, and to the regular reviewers—well, you know that I've said this before, but I'll say it again—you're all awesome. I'm not going to waste a bunch of time and space reiterating the key points of the first part's logistical stuff, since I've been told, some readers just skip the author's notes anyway—a bad call in my opinion, since I usually always put important stuff in there—but, oh well. Suffice to say all the good things to know about how this an AU sequel to a one-shot a did by special reader request can be read in part one for those who are interested. On a last note, I'm happy to say that the good stuff I promised in the last chapter really is here... finally, which, I suppose, when you see the descriptors, make it neat that I'm also posting this on Veteran's Day in the US. So, if you object to scorching unfness between two consenting adults—one of them in an oh, so scintillating pair of military desert fatigues, uh, well, then... you should probably turn back now. You've been warned. Otherwise, let's go...~

* * *

><p>Part II: When He Caught Her<p>

* * *

><p>Booth stared at Brennan in that minute, looking at her with a tilt of his head as he thought about the words she had said:: <em>have sex, intercourse, coitus, bang, tap, fuck... and, make love<em>.

The first three were pure Brennan. The second three were Brennan channeling Angela. And, the last? The _last_ one was what made the well spring of hope that had been growing stronger and stronger in his chest, increasing minute by minute since Brennan had said those three little words, nearly implode with the realization of maximum possibility. '_Make love'_, Booth thought with his lips turning upwards in a small, but very pleased, smile. '_Make love'—huh. How about that? Bones... she—I guess she really was listening all along every time I spouted off some fortune cookie bit of wisdom. Because, well—'make love'—she could've only gotten that one from me. And, so, she knows the difference—what it means to say it like that—and so, since she knows what it means, and what it means to me, that can only mean that she really does love me. She loves me. Bones really loves me. _

A feeling of warmth washed over Booth again as he savored the thought. _She really does love me. _A second, and slightly more mischievous voice suddenly spoke up in his had at that thought. _And, is there anything you're going to do about that, Booth? _The second voice sounded playfully like Brennan, despite the fact that it wasn't she who had spoken. In fact, the real Brennan was looking back at Booth in a nervously expectant way and had remained quiet in anticipation of his response to her question.

Looking at her, standing there in clothing that was just as dirty and travel stained as he was, Booth noticed minute differences about her for the first time since they had met each other in the short time since they'd both arrived in DC. A single text message from Brennan, sent on a hopeful wish and with a hastily breathed prayer—or plea, as might be more appropriate in Brennan's case, to the unknown—when a call from Cam had told her that he had returned to DC by way of Fort McNair. Her hair was shorter and darker than he'd remembered it being, her pale skin a slightly darker color than he remembered it being—no doubt the tan coming from the days she'd spent outside working in the jungles of the southeast Asia, and her eyes were still red rimmed from when she had been crying earlier. But, in that minute, Booth knew that he'd never seen Brennan look more lovely or more desirable. He wanted her in that minute as he'd always wanted her, but, if such a thing were possible, he wanted her even more. _God, I want her. I've always wanted her. I want her now; I want her later; I want her forever_, Booth thought to himself.

The playful voice again perked up in his head as it asked, _Okay, if you want her, than the same question stands from before: what are you going to do about it Booth?_

Licking his lip, Booth tilted his head slightly at Brennan. _Oh, I'm gonna do something about it_, Booth thought confidently. _Definitely going to do something about it. _

Slowly, very slowly, Booth took a step towards Brennan as he nodded. "Uh, yeah, Bones—about that—" He stopped, held her gaze for a few seconds, and he could see her warring with herself . A battle was reflected in Brennan's eyes at that moment, and Booth could see it as clearly as if she was a book or map to be read, and, more importantly, he understood what that battle signified. One impulse to stay—because she was hopeful and giving him the benefit of the doubt in knowing he'd accept her offer—battled with the other impulse, the standard driven by fear that she always felt to run in anticipation of being rejected. Wanting to end her torment, Booth slowly allowed the smile that he'd been holding back for several seconds slowly grow on his face. He smiled at her—giving her a grin that made her heart skip a metaphorical beat—and then added in a husky voice, "I think I can help you with that one, Bones."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Booth was rewarded with one of the sweetest sights he had ever seen—Brennan smiled. She smiled at him, a grin of honesty, and hope, and satisfaction. She let out a large sigh of relief, and it pained Booth for a few seconds to know that such a normally confident woman—a woman who was sometimes so confident that it bordered on annoying overconfidence—could feel such debilitating hesitation and crushing uncertainty.

Her confidence sufficiently bolstered by his answer, Brennan reached for his hand. She held it for a minute, letting her fingers lightly touch the rough calluses on his palm. She studied it for a few seconds, seeing the dry skin in desperate need of hydration. Brennan thought about what that hand had done since last she saw him, what horrors he'd faced as the dry heat of the desert Afghan sun beat down relentlessly on his head day after day. Then, resolved to put such negative thoughts out of her mind, she wondered what wonderful things that hand would be doing to her in a fairly short period of time. The excitement building in her, Brennan curled her fingers around his hand, looked up at Booth—who was studying her again as she studied him—and smiled as she gave him a firm tug in the direction of one place in the apartment—despite six years of their partnership and dance towards one another—to which Booth had almost never before traveled. She led him out of the living room and guided him towards her bedroom.

Booth gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze as she led the way, as he was somewhat unfamiliar with the part of her apartment that led to her bedroom. She smiled over her shoulder as he followed, this time no war happening between two opposing forces of hope and doubt. Only faith burned brightly in Brennan's eyes in that minute—faith in him and in them—and if such a thing were possible, that show of trust and devotion made Booth love her even more.

Quickly throwing open the door to her bedroom, Brennan didn't bother to turn on the light as she lightly dropped Booth's hand and turned around to face him. Booth didn't have more than a second or two to prepare before he registered Brennan's sudden movements towards him. He braced himself so that she wouldn't knock him into something as hurtled herself at him in a move that ironically echoed his earlier action towards her at the mall. However, this time no one was of a mind to resist as Booth welcomed her onslaught. Throwing herself against him, Brennan wrapped her hands around his waist , interlacing her fingers to rest in the small of his back. She hugged him for a minute—almost as if to reassure herself that yes, he was real, and yes, this was actually happening—before she allowed their position to take on a decidedly more intimate feeling. Her breaths coming shorter in her chest, Brennan leaned into Booth and pressed her chest to his, slowly rubbing her breasts back and forth against him.

She loved the sensation the friction elicited through the multiple layers of each piece of clothing they wore. Brennan closed her eyes for a minute as she breathed deeply, inhaling Booth's scent. Some of the odors she didn't associate with Booth, but recognized nonetheless—sand, sunblock, and the indescribable funk that settled over a person after many long hours of arduous travel, no matter from what place one had come. But, sniffing again, paying more close attention for what she was trying to find, eventually Brennan found a hint of familiarity in his scent—his sweat and a very faint smell of menthol, no doubt from the shaving cream he'd been required to use more frequently while on duty with the Army more than was usual in the course of the work they completed for the FBI. Brennan breathed deeply as she found that faint scent of familiarity, and clung to it. It took her a minute to realize she was mirroring in her body the thoughts that she had been holding onto in her mind. In just a brief moment, Brennan had settled into a repetitive motion, clinging to Booth as she continued to press herself against his chest in an undulating motion. Each time she completed a motion across the broad expanse of his chest, she stopped and reversed motion, making her nipples harden and the first growing signs of her arousal burst into her conscious mind.

Finally, at last, Brennan let out a verbal response as she exhaled slowly. "Ohhhhh," Brennan said. "Thank God," she muttered, a swift exhale of air escaping her lips as she moved towards him.

Booth, his voice tightened as he enjoyed her movements, cracked a bit as he began,"I thought that you didn't believe in—"

"I don't," Brennan said as she stepped away and looked at him with an appreciative leer. Eying him hungrily as she licked her lips and contemplated where to start, she then continued. "But, it conveys an appropriate and accurate representation of the sentiment that I'm currently feeling. So, yes, I'm going to go with thanking the metaphorically-appropriate deity."

Arching an eyebrow as she gaze fastened on Booth's mid-secton, her decision suddenly made, Brennan reached for Booth's belt. She smiled as she thought of his Cocky belt buckle, now replaced by a khaki-colored nylon web belt with a simple friction buckle. Booth glanced down and watched her slender fingers loosen the belt from its buckle, trying to maintain some sense of self-control while enjoying the sensations as Brennan edged closer to his groin.

"Bones," he growled.

"Hmmmm," Brennan murmured. With a quick pull, the belt parted, and she slid it free from the belt loop of Booth's Army Combat Uniform trousers, allowing it to fall to the hardwood floor with a clink. Quite pleased with herself, Brennan smiled wryly as she tugged the lightly-knotted drawstring and untied it, revealing a four-button fly. She thumbed open the top button of this ACU trousers before Booth stilled her hand and brought it to rest on his hip.

"Wait," he said, his voice rough with desire and a little breathless at her efforts. "Wait a second, Bones."

"Hmmm," came the response again as Brennan suddenly stopped and tilted her head to look up at him.

"What?" she asked.

"Just," Booth took a breath and then swallowed once before he nodded. "Just—"

Laughing again as she noted with appreciation the growing proof of his arousal, Brennan shook her head as she said, "I'm done waiting, Booth. I think both of us have waited long enough, don't you?"

She smiled at him, and then reached to remove the impediment that was keeping her from achieving her goal. Not one to be thwarting, and loving the challenge of it, Brennan hardened her determination to get Booth out of his pants—and, preferably, as quickly as possible. However, after a few seconds, she was biting her lower lip in frustration, not certain how best to achieve her goal. Finally, she stepped away and looked at Booth with a curious shake of her head.

"Booth," she said with a husky laugh. "While I fail to see what the logic might be behind their reasoning, it appears that...err, well, I don't think the Army wants you taking your pants off."

He laughed. "Well, if you would've stopped and let me explain, I would've told you that this isn't just as simple as you whipping my Cocky belt buckle off and yanking my jeans down around my ass just so that you can have your way with me, Bones." He nodded at her, "I did try to tell you—"

"But, I didn't stop to listen—"

"Because you always have to do things the hard way," Booth breathed, tilting his head to kiss her lightly on the cheek. "Always the hard way with you, Bones."

"You didn't say anything when I started fumbling with your pants," Brennan observed.

Booth pulled away and said, "So sue me. I kinda liked you pawing at me."

"I would much rather do other, more explicit things to you, than simply tug at your pants, if you have some damn idea of how to get them off," Brennan said, a bit of annoyance at being thwarted in her earlier efforts. "What is the purpose of not being able to have soldiers easily remove their pants? Surely, if for no other reason than to facilitate using the bathroom quickly in situations when time is of the essence, it's illogical to make it as hard as it appears it is for you to be able to touch yourself—"

At the rather innocuous, but extremely dirty sounds words, Booth felt his semi hard on get much, much harder. _You're killing me, Bones. Absolutely killing me, _Booth thought with a chuckle. Then, nodding at her to distract himself, he said, "Well, if you had tens of thousands of testosterone-amped, undersexed, severely hard-up 18-to-30 year-olds in a war zone, you'd probably want to make those pants as difficult to put on and take off as possible, too, Bones. It keeps the young men's shenanigans at a low hum." He paused, cocked an eyebrow at her and said with a grin, "Or, that's the theory, anyway."

"Booth," Brennan began.

"Yes, Bones?"

"Ummm, not to put too fine a point on it, but I fail to see how we're going to be able to have sex if I'm unable to access your genitalia—"

Booth shot her a look, and Brennan inclined her head as she responded, "What?"

"Genitalia?"

"Yes," Brennan said. "What's wrong with me using—"

"It just doesn't really set the right tone, Bones, that's all," Booth laughed with a shake of his head.

Inclining her head at him, Brennan said with a slightly annoyed catch in her voice, "Well, as I was saying, Booth—it's not like 'setting the mood' is really going to matter, since it appears the design of your military uniform has precluded me the physical access I need to certain portions of your anatomy which are required in order for us to have sex. So—"

Reaching over, Booth shut Brennan up with a kiss. Some of her annoyance melted away when he finally stepped back and said with an approving nod, "Better. Now, pipe down for a minute while I do what I need to do so your impatient self can start pawing me again, huh?"

Scowling just a bit, Brennan watched in curiosity as Booth sat down on the edge of her bed and, crossing his leg over his knee, began to ruthlessly untie his bootlaces. He struggled pulling his boots off, growing frustrated until he remembered how swollen his feet probably were after spending most of the prior twenty-four hours sitting on a military transport. He thought then of the shiny brass shoehorn that he had lent to a ANP sergeant the morning before his last mission and wondered whether Sgt. Sahar had already sold it on the black market. So, he unlaced his boots with a silent grumble until the top laces were loose enough that he could deblouse his trouser legs and unwedge each of his aching feet from its stiff, dusty, mud-caked boot. Only then could he slide out of his sweat-damp socks. For a split second, several images passed through his mind as he thought of the bad cases of boot-rot he'd seen guys with over the years, while doing field exercises at Benning or with the larger unit deployments to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. However, Booth's attention was quickly refocused when he saw Brennan move to kneel in front of him. She tilted her head as she looked at him, her eyes full of longing and curiosity as she lightly placed a hand on each of his knees.

"Let me?" she asked tentatively, no longer content to wait on the sidelines. "I... I want to touch you."

He reached down and took each one of her hands in his own as he laced his fingers in between hers. Booth raised their hands in the air for a minute before he smiled and said, "Yes, but give me just one sec, okay?"

Nodding, Brennan reluctantly let their hands fall apart. Booth pulled aside the flap of his long-sleeve, digital camouflage shirt and unzipped it, then shrug his arms out of the sleeves. He folded the blouse in half before casually dropping it onto the floor at the foot of her bed. He crossed his arms and pulled his khaki T-shirt over his head, flinging the damp cotton to the side. He turned to her, wearing just his four-button army trousers, his dog tags, his St. Christopher's medal, and an easy smile as he sat on the edge of her bed. Brennan still reclined on the backs of her legs as she watched Booth with a critical eye.

"Better?" he asked her with a cocky grin coming onto his face.

Brennan nodded. "Yes. Much." She stopped and let her eyes run up and down his torso. "In addition to obviously having been outside without a shirt on for a prolonged period of time, and not necessarily wearing the appropriate amount of sun block—" she stopped and shot Booth a look of annoyance at reference to one of their common debates over the merits of appropriate sun protection before continuing. "—you've increased the toning of several of your muscle groups since last I've seen you, Booth," Brennan said with a clearly appreciative tone in her voice. "Particularly the _pectoralis major_ and the _rectus abdominus_ muscles."

Booth's brow furrowed at the remark, and then he nodded his head at her. "Bones?"

"Yes, Booth?"

"Do me a favor?"

"Anything," she said, suddenly a bit shy as she flushed at the implication of her offer.

"Stop squinting at me," he said with a quiet chuckle. "If you want to examine me, then how about you skip the visual study and go straight for the hands-on examination, and get to the you-touching-me part of things, huh?"

Arching an eyebrow at him, she said, "Is that a firm offer, Booth?"

"Yup," he said, his voice deepening a bit with a playful tone to it. Quirking his head at her, Booth then half-joked, "And, if you come here, I've got something else that's firm that I can offer you. too." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her.

"Hmmm," Brennan said, as if seeming to contemplate his offer for a few seconds. At last gave in with a grin of her own as she said, "Okay."

Shaking his head with an amused look in his eye, Booth said, "Come here, Bones."

Slowly, Brennan stood up and took a step towards the bed. Reaching out, Booth wrapped his arms around her waist, letting his hands rest lightly on the swell of her ass as he pulled her close. Her body was warm and responsive to his touch, and Booth lightly squeezed her ass in appreciation, causing Brennan to hiss slightly at the unexpected but pleasurable sensation. Tilting his head up towards hers, Booth leaned in to kiss her. Brennan eagerly sought his lips, allowing herself to fall into his kiss—and her bed— as they laid back and Booth urged her to come closer to him. Covering her body with his, Brennan suddenly felt as if she couldn't feel him like she needed to with as many layers of her clothing separating her skin from his.

Pulling away, Booth moaned in protest as she lifted herself off his chest and said, "This isn't working—"

For a split second, Booth felt the beginning of his new world start to crack, before Brennan quickly uttered a magical panacea that made things even better than they had been before she spoke. "I need to get out of these clothes. Now... right _now_."

Shrugging easily out of her dark navy blue canvas jacket, she removed her lighter blue button down shirt that—had either one of them noticed—which seemed to mimic a style Booth had often worn as a staple of his casual attire for years. Tossing both garments behind her, revealing her grimy white tank top that was smudged with dirt and dust and stained with sweat from the many long hours of travel between Indonesia and D.C., Brennan felt more exposed and more vulnerable than she had since Booth had righted her world with three simple words—_I love you_. However, still it was too much, and Brennan wondered what was the most logical way to get in a position where she could get out of her jeans. Meanwhile, Booth watched her strip with a hunger clear in his eyes, and his hands hovered just on the swell of each hip. Brennan, distracted by the movement when she felt his hands land back on her hips, looked over at Booth. She felt a renewed flush of moisture between her legs as she grew wetter as she thought about how the look in Booth's eyes seemed to indicate he wanted to devour her—in more ways than one.

But, then, suddenly, Brennan stopped when a raw and pink gash—still angry and irritated—staring back at her from just above Booth's left pectoral. She frowned when she saw the wound, clearly healing, but still looking as if Booth might feel pain at anyone touching it. _How did I not see that? _Brennan suddenly asked herself. _How could I not...how did I not see this? _

Brennan froze in that moment, her eyes riveted to the one spot on Booth's chest as a new emotional response began to swirl in her mind. _Something happened, and he was hurt, and oh, God. It's my fault. All my fault. He was hurt, and it's because of me_—

As soon as she stopped, Booth could feel the shift in her mood. Brennan had gone from a nervous and passionate excitement to something that was decidedly more...somber. Looking up at her as he lifted his head off the bed, Booth met her eyes with a simple question.

"Bones?"

Brennan's immediate response was to pull back, and scramble off of where she sat straddling his body. However, the look in Booth's eyes stopped her as she bit her lower lip in anxious somberness. Shaking her head sadly, she replied quietly, "This is all my fault."

Struggling to sit up, after a few seconds, Booth smiled at her gently, raising a hand to her cheek as he used his thumb to trace the contour of her cheekbone. "Come on, Bones. I thought we settled that one."

"No—"

"Yes, we did—"

"No," Brennan repeated. "That is to say, this is not about..." Brennan paused, the emotionally disquieting feelings still rolling over her before she managed to take a breath and finally finish her thought. "Not...not Hannah."

"Then, what?" Booth asked., a small look of indulgence clear on his face "What do you think is your fault now, Bones?" He paused, stopped, and then flashed her a lopsided grin as he said, "Ya know, Bones, one would almost think that you were the one who was Catholic with the guilty conscience you seemed to have developed while we were gone."

Frowning, Brennan refused to be distracted by Booth's religious quip—which, on any normal day, Brennan would've quickly acted to contradict him with some witty verbal retort of her own—but today was not a normal day. Instead, she simply reached out and placed her fingers lightly below the scar without actually touching it.

"This," Brennan said softly. "This... it's—it's my fault it happened to you. I...I-I did this."

For a split second, Booth didn't know what she was talking about, and he briefly thought she might be referring to some metaphorical heartbreak she thought she'd caused by rejecting him that night at the Hoover. However, as Brennan continued to stare at the same spot on his chest, Booth quickly realized that she was, as usual, actually being literal. When he glanced down, and saw what she was gazing at with a solemn reverence, he slowly shook his head as the latest source of her guilt became clear to him

"No, Bones," Booth told her gently. "You didn't do that."

Nodding, Brennan replied, "Yes, yes I did, Booth."

"No," Booth repeated. His mind flashed to the day it had happened several weeks before he'd received the call from Caroline Julian to come home. Images flashed in his head—sights and sounds and feelings. It had been a routine patrol that had been interrupted by a local trying to chase a mangy looking dog into a restricted zone. Booth, content to let his unit do their job, had held back as they did what they needed to do to warn the man away from the area where he'd been trying to enter. And, then, from somewhere in the distance, there was the tell-tale, but unmistakable, sharp squeak of static before the bomb detonated. Booth was far enough away that the blast only resulted in him having ringing in his ears for three days, while most of the other survivors had been diagnosed with a severe case of tinnitus for well over a week. But, then Jackson had gotten Booth's attention with a yell of his rank, and Booth felt a delayed heavy pressure on his chest before it was suddenly very difficult to move. A wave of nausea and a swirling of sight and sound later, Booth found himself being stitched up by medics and being told that was a hell of a thing that happened when the random piece of sharpenel had pierced his armor when two other men had suffered much worse injuries when the IED went off.

Pushing the images away, Booth concentrated on assuaging Brennan's guilt and tried to explain to her what had happened without ruining the mood by drudging up more of Afghanistan than he wanted to bring into their lives. "That , Bones," Booth began with a slow nod. "That was done by a Taliban insurgent who got himself blown up by misrigging his own sub-par fucked-up IED in Quryah and caused a piece of shrapnel to pierce my kevlar body armor, Bones." He stopped, seeing her doubt still present, and then, so there would be no mistake, said firmly, "Him. Not you, Bones. Not you."

Again, Booth felt her body tighten as he said the words 'IED', 'shrapnel' and 'pierced'. Tension radiated from her body, and Booth didn't know how to absolve Brennan of the guilt she suddenly was feeling. Shaking his head, Booth said, "But, it's okay, Bones. I promise. Really...it looks much worse than it actually was—I didn't even get more than 24 hours of recup time because the docs said it was just a scratch."

"I can see how the skin has started to heal, Booth," Brennan said with a slow and sad shake of her head. "While I don't think you're outright being deceptive in your description of the events that transpired to cause this wound, I do think you are trying to minimize the extent of your injury."

Lightly tapping the skin above his wound with her finger tip, Brennan said, "Your epithelial cells have migrated around the wound's scab. And, while I'll be the first to admit that I possess no where near the expertise that someone like Cam does when it comes to flesh, I can tell this scar is indicative of a wound that was quite extensive...enough so that you needed stitches and probably lost a fair amount of blood and—"

Her voice grew thick at that moment, and Brennan hadn't realized it until she had to fight back a quiet sob, that she had started to tear up again. Once more, she struggled to breathe, to get enough air into her lungs so that she could finish her sentence, her confession to, Booth. "—and pain," she managed at last. "Pain. You must've suffered a tremendous amount of pain when this wound was inflicted... and that's all my fault—"

"No—" Booth began, knowing that if he didn't interrupt Brennan's appreciated but wholly misplaced attempt to claim responsibility for his wound, that they'd quickly be back at square one. _And, if that happens, _Booth thought miserably, _we might as well just go back to the Mall and start all over again._

Not willing to let Booth finish his thought, Brennan lifted her blue eyes, once again shining with unshed tears to meet his soft and warm brown gaze. "Yes, Booth," she whispered. "You were hurt when you were in Afghanistan...and you never would've been there to be hurt in the first place if I hadn't given you a reason to leave D.C. I—" Again her voice trailed off, as she felt her body quake with a series of short sobs she suddenly no longer could control. "I never wanted to hurt you, and it seems as if that's all I've done since the night I told you I wanted to protect you, Booth. I've just kept hurting you and hurting you...and this...it's all my fault. All of it. Everything."

She punctuated her final word with a slight sniffle that suddenly grew louder as she swallowed once, trying to get rid of the ball of tightness that had suddenly attached itself to the back of her throat. But, she couldn't get rid of it, no matter how hard she tried, knowing that it was futile to fight off the wave of emotion that had resulted in her needing to battle the tears in the first place. And, in the end, as Brennan squeezed her eyes shut and let the sobs fully claim her, she kept hearing one thought repeatedly echo in her head. _All my fault_, she thought miserably. _He was hurt, and it never would've happened if I hadn't screwed up like I did. This...this is all my fault. All of it. Everything. I just...I don't deserve him._

Booth pursed his lips as he watched her struggle with her thoughts. "Bones," he whispered, reaching for her hands.

She stared at him in that moment, feeling unsure and more fragile, more vulnerable than she'd ever felt in her life. No moment before this one had in any way prepared her for feelings so...weak. Not being abandoned by her parents and brother, not facing the horrors of violence and genocide in her work, and not even realizing that one day—quite suddenly it seemed—Booth had somehow seemed to breach every defensive fortification she'd constructed over the years, scaled every wall, conquered every obstacle she constructed to keep herself isolated and untouched and alone—in a word: _impervious_.

_God, I hate that word, _Brennan thought. _I can't...impervious? What a joke. I was stupid, so stupid to think I could just cut myself off like that. And, now, knowing what it feels like to be with him, how could I ever go back to living my life like that knowing what I know now? But...if I've hurt him, and I've kept hurting him. Maybe I'm just better off being by myself. Maybe he was right when he moved on. Maybe...it doesn't matter anymore, what I feel...or maybe even what he feels. Maybe, when I've done everything to him that I've done...and with as bad as it is, everything that I could still do to hurt him, maybe... maybe love doesn't matter. Maybe I was right when I said he needed to be protected_—_protected from me. So, maybe he was right to move on and replace me_—

"I don't deserve you," she said slowly and carefully, forcing each word to come out of her mouth despite the bit of herself that each word cost her. "I don't...I can't do this if I know I've hurt you, because if I've done it once, or contributed to the conditions that led to it happening in either a mental, emotional, or physical context...I...I can't do this, Booth."

"Do what?" he said evenly. "What are you saying?" He narrowed his eyes as he tried to follow her tortured thinking.

"I'm saying," she said, slowly. "I'm saying that maybe you were right. Maybe you were right to move on. Maybe someone like Hannah—"

"Fuck Hannah," Booth said, a passion edging into his voice. "I told you. She was what she was, and while I'm grateful for what she did for me when I was in a very dark place, I don't want her, Bones." He paused and then pulled her tightly against him. "You're the only one I want."

"No—"

"Yes," Booth repeated. "Yes, Bones."

"But—"

"No, Bones," Booth told her, clucking his tone at her in gentle remonstrance. "No, more of that. No more excuses, no more guilt, no more negative thoughts, okay? It's...it's just you and me." He leaned into kiss her again, and Brennan felt herself melt a bit as he pressed his lips to her neck, relishing in her silky, ivory skin. "Just you and me," he repeated softly. "Right now—just you and me. Understand?"

Brennan moaned lightly as his hands came up to the hem of her t-shirt. His finger toyed with the edge of the dirty fabric, his hands darting underneath it to caress the soft skin near her navel, trying to distract her emotions with something a bit more tangible.

"Bones?"

Brennan was silent in response, but Booth felt some of the tension ease out of her.

"Bones, are you listening to me?

"I—" she managed to mumble at last.

Shaking his head, Booth said, "Listen to me...are you listening, Bones?" She opened her eyes, swallowed once and nodded. "Listen, we both have made decisions, right? We had to...we did the best we could with the info we had at the time. Now, I'm not saying that all the decisions we made were the right ones.". Booth flashed his eyebrows reflectively and shrugged his shoulders simply. "Hell, I _know _there's things _I'd _do differently if I could. I imagine there are decisions you've made that you might make differently, knowing what you know now." He took her hands and held them between his, her slender fingers dwarfed by his own. "But, that's not how it works, you know? We are where we are, right? We are who we are, we did what we did, we are where we are, and we do the best we can and have to accept that's just how it goes."

Booth leaned closer to her, his forehead touching hers as he squeezed her fingers gently. "And, right now, Bones—I wouldn't want to be any place than there I am right now, here with you. You know that, right? No matter what happened before—none of that matters now. None of it. All that matters now is you, me, and being right where we are. Here, in this moment, right now." He stopped and then said, "Okay?" Brennan remained quiet and so Booth pulled away slightly and kissed her forehead. "Just you and me," he repeated. "Because...I love you, Bones. And...well, to hear you tell me tonight that you love me? Well, that makes tonight the greatest night of my life." He reached up and stroked her hair with his palm. "I wouldn't change anything, Bones. Not...one...damn...thing." Cupping his hand around the side of her head, he leaned in and kissed her forehead again.

"I...my brain, Booth. It knows what you're telling me, but every time I look at you I just feel this pain in my heart—I...I don't know how to stop feeling that," Brennan said, the tears running faster down her cheeks as she began to sob harder. "I just don't—"

Again, almost as if it was a reflex, Booth reached out and tried to distract her again with his touch. He allowed his hand to stroke the soft skin of the curve of her next. Brennan shivered once, goosebumps appearing as his calloused fingers lightly traced lines upon and down her neck before he continued speaking. "You're thinking about this way too much," he said gently. "It serves no purpose, Bones. There's no reason—"

"I can't help it," Brennan whispered self-consciously. "I can't—"

"Bones," he said softly, moving his hands back to hers, curling his thick fingers around hers as he pulled her hand up towards his chest. He placed her hand over his heart and held her hand there with his own. Booth felt his heart begin to race a little as her cool fingers warmed against the naked skin of his chest. "I'm here, Bones. I'm not going anywhere, okay? Okay? You feel that?"

"Your heartbeat?" she asked quietly. She scrunched her eyebrows and shrugged. "Yes, of course," she said.

"I'm right here," he whispered. "We've both come a long way today, Bones." He smiled and squeezed her hand again. "And, I don't just mean that literally, either, by the way," he said with a toothy grin. "But, where ever we're headed—you and me, Bones—we'll get there together." Booth took a deep breath. "You'll never be alone again, Bones. I promise. Whatever happens, from this point on—we'll handle it. But, there'll be no more running—not by me, and not by you. No more. We're done with that." He reached up and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. "From this moment, we do this thing together. Not alone, not separate, but _together_. Do you understand what I mean, Bones? Do you understand what I'm telling you here?"

"I'm not afraid of being alone, Booth," Brennan said quietly. "Being alone is easy. I've done that part before, so I know I can do it again if I need to, but it's...it's—"

"What Bones?"

"It's being with you," she told him truthfully, "being with you—"

"Oh, come on, now, Bones, don't say it like that," he said lightly. "I'm not that bad—" he began to joke, in an attempt to diffuse her angst.

Brennan scowled a bit, and then said in a softer tone, "It's being with you _and _not hurting you—that's what I don't know how to do, Booth."

"Look, Bones...you and me...just because we want to be together, finally can be together, it doesn't mean we're going to stop being the people we've always been," he said with a smile. "And, that's okay. You and me...we...bicker, remember?"

Brennan couldn't help but smile again as she nodded, thinking about all the 'bickering' they'd done over the continental United States, from in his SUV to Sweets' office to hundreds of different crime scenes, and many, many other places in between.

"Well, I'm not gonna lie to you," he continued in a more quiet tone. "People who bicker...well, on occasion, as much as I don't like to admit it, people who bicker hurt each other, Bones."

"I know that," she suddenly said, looking up at him in a pleading way. "I know that," she repeated in a softer tone of voice. "And, that's why I'm afraid—"

"It's okay to be afraid," Booth said honestly. "And, as for the other stuff, Bones? The bickering...the hurting... as long as we love each other, we'll do what we need to do to get to where we need to go... together." He held her gaze firmly. "Understand?"

Again, she began to sniffle slightly at his words, unable to help herself. Brennan hastily brushed away the tears, suddenly angry and disgusted with herself. "God, I'm terrible."

"What?" Booth asked, confused and in disbelief at the sudden shift in her tone of voice. "No, Bones—"

"I'm a mess," Brennan insisted, a bit of her old self-castigating bravado returning in a way that made Booth very happy. "A sobbing, emotional, irrational wreck of a mess." She looked down at herself in exasperation and said, "How can you even stand to be near me right now? I can't remember the last time I showered, so I know I must smell very pungent, and I know I must look—"

"Beautiful," he said, interrupting her with a swift shake of his head. "Absolutely fucking gorgeous."

"No, I'm not—"

At this, Booth groaned as he said, "Oh, really, Bones? Really? You're gonna play that card? Come on—" He flashed her a grin before he continued. "You know you're hot. And, you know I know it, too. So, if you're doing this just because you want me to say it, fine. But, you're killing me here, Bones." He paused and then said, "Do you know how incredibly gorgeous you are? You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen—" He then tilted his head and added, "And, do you have any idea how much I want you right now? I'm nearly jumping out of my skin here, Bones, I want you so badly. God, I can't even know how to tell you how much I want you..."

"That's unlike you," Brennan quipped with a wicked look in her eye and a smile threatening to crack her straight face as she spoke.

"Why?"

"Because," Brennan said. "Usually, you don't shut up."

"Wait," Booth said, a bit of disbelief coming into his voice. "Are _you _saying that_ I _have a big mouth?" He looked at her with a completely straight face as he said, "You're kidding, right?"

At this, for the first time in several minutes, Brennan was no longer crying. She bit back a smile as she said, "Maybe." She paused before she clarified with a twitch at the corners of her mouth threatening to break into a wide grin, "That is to say, no, I'm not kidding."

"Me?" Booth repeated. "You, the squint, woman of a thousand words, are saying that I, the FBI guy, have a big mouth?"

"Or, if you prefer, talkative, chatty, verbose, wordy...long winded?" Brennan offered several alternatives in that smart-ass infuriating way that only made Booth lover her even more.

"Oh, that's it," Booth said, a change in his tone warning Brennan that the mood between them had shifted like quicksilver once again. "Game is on, Bones. Game is _definitely _on."

"And, what game would that be, Booth?" Brennan asked feigning innocence, although they both knew what they were talking about.

"The one where we don't use our mouths to talk, Bones," he growled, his voice dropping a half octave from its previous pitch. "I don't want to talk anymore, if you know what I mean." Booth pulled her hand down to his lap. "Bones..."

As soon as he pulled her down to him, Brennan could feel the prominent bulge of his erection. She smiled at him in a saucy way, and then replaced her hand with her ass, happily sliding into his lap, but not before cupping him through the sleek fabric of his ACU trousers. She smiled as she heard him groan, and loved it when she felt his hard on straining against the tightness of her denim jeans. Suddenly feeling a bit claustrophobic, she suddenly thought better of her initial thought and scrambled off his lap. Booth watched with narrowed eyes as she quickly struggled to her feet, when he realized there was no need for concern or panic in that only Brennan was up to something... interesting. He watched with an amused eye as she hastily unbuttoned the first button on her jeans and quickly pulled the zipper down. Shimmying out of her jeans, she kicked away her field boots—although, compared to Booth's, Brennan wasn't sure if the black hiking Sketchers could really be termed as anything more than a sturdy pair of rubber-soled leather shoes—and almost lost her balance before she quickly readjusted, compensated for the shift in her equilibrium, and then stood triumphantly in front of Booth, her eyes alight in excitement at her victory.

He chuckled at her movements, and nodded, "Better?"

"Better," she said, reaching for the hem of her tank top. "Much better."

Quickly shaking his head, Booth said. "Wait a sec—"

Brennan stopped and then said, "What?"

"Ummm, come here," Booth said, curving his index finger at her as he narrowed his eyes at her.

"What for?"

"Because," Booth said. "I wanna do that."

Nodding, Brennan took a step towards him. However, she stopped and then pointed at his chest.

"First, those off," Brennan said, a hard edge coming into her voice. It took Booth a minute to figure out what she was talking about before he saw where she was pointing. "I hate them," Brennan said with a shake of her head as she stared maliciously at the dog tags. "I know they're important, I know what they stand for, but I can't help it. I hate them. I hate everything about them and everything that they stand for in the last seven months. To me, those only mean seven months of us being a part, Booth. And, you getting hurt...and me almost losing you. So, please. Take them off. Now. Right now. Off."

Booth eyed her for a minute, but, knowing it was a small thing, particularly when he knew how raw a nerve it hit as a symbol for the extreme pain and guilt she was feeling, albeit needlessly—even though, technically he could get into a lot of trouble for doing it—Booth quickly looped them over his head and tossed then lightly on the ground where the rest of their clothes had been scattered. Brennan watched them fall with a satisfied look on her face, and only when the faint _clack _of the dog tags signal that they had come to rest on the wooden floor of her bedroom, did Brennan take another step towards the bed, towards Booth, and brought herself within his arm's reach.

Gently, Booth brought his hands to the hem of her thin top. When he gently, but firmly, yanked up her tank top and tossed it over her shoulder, Brennan felt the wonderful night air caress her belly. After months of being conditioned to the humidity of Indonesia, while D.C.'s weather was by no means without its own issues, the weight of the air was not as constricting.

_Or, maybe, _Brennan thought as she shivered slightly as Booth studied her with a gaze that was still the same hungry look he had given her earlier, but _now—now_, it had grown stronger and even more pronounced. _Maybe I'm shivering for another reason..._

"Booth?" Brennan asked, curious to know what he was thinking.

"Bones—" Booth growled, his voice already hoarse with desire. "Remember... no talking, right?"

At this pointed reminder, Brennan laughed. And, as he felt a flush of warmth shoot through him as he heard her laugh, her laugh sounding so much better to his ears than the cries that had twisted like a knife in his gut such a short time earlier, Booth suddenly knew that he'd waited—no, they'd waited—long enough.

"Bones," he rasped again. "You're killing me."

"Sorry," Brennan muttered, coming towards him, feeling liberated by the removal of all of her dirty and travel-stained clothing but for her very utilitarian bra and panties. "I just needed...I needed a minute."

"Mmmm," Booth moaned as she climbed back onto him, pushing Booth down onto the bed. "Yeah, well, you might've needed a minute, and you got it. But, now, I need something else, and I think it's my turn to get what I need, Bones."

"And, what's that?"

He thrust his pelvis up into her, and Brennan grinned down at him as she said, "Oh, yes." She stopped, smiling at him, and said, "I know that's something you've been trying to tell me you need some help with, right?"

"God," Booth groaned at her words. Throwing his head back, he squeezed his eyes shut as he shook his head in exasperation. "You're killing me, Bones. Ya know, with the yip yap? You're absolutely fucking killing me—"

Booth's words abruptly stopped as he felt Brennan's hands goes to the buttons on his ACU trousers. With skilled hands and using quite adroit movements, Brennan thumbed them open one at a time. Booth felt a wave of pleasure at her ministrations and let himself fall back into the bed as she began to finish undressing him. After another minute or two, quickly, Brennan's hands snaked inside the trousers, and she suddenly felt a strong flare of annoyance flush through her as her hand encountered not the soft but stiff warmth she had been anticipating, but felt another layer of cotton blocking her way.

"For fuck's sake," she muttered, more to herself than Booth as the disbelief registered in her voice. "Now, this is getting just a bit ridiculous."

Booth's head shot up from the bed, noting the change in Brennan's tone, and he swallowed a couple of times before he finally gained enough focus to concentrate on her words, but couldn't do anything more than tilt his head to ask for clarification.

"How many damn layers do you have on under here?" Brennan asked in exasperation, answering his question and venting some of her ire at him. "Goddamn it, Booth, I know Hazmat team members that don't wear this many tiers of protective garments."

"Uhhh," Booth swallowed once and then offered lamely. "It's not like I can go commando, Bones—even if I am a commando." She gave him a blank look. "Special Forces, you know? The Army sorta has this thing about rules, and they kinda like us following regs, and I'd be out of uniform—"

Suddenly, and with a quite vicious tug, Brennan used both of her hands to pull the ACU trousers down from around his waist. "Stop explaining, Booth." She then tilted her head and pointed at him, "But, just for the record, like I said, Booth, big mouth," Brennan grinned evilly. "You have a very big mouth when, right now, you really need to be quiet."

Looking down at the offensive garment as she saw the white cotton civvies staring back at her now that the ACU trousers had been discarded, Brennan sighed heavily. She then shook her head before she looking back at Booth and said, "Okay, now I don't mind doing most of the work here, but you could help me out a bit since I'm expecting some type of chastity belt to be the next surprise I find when I pull your briefs down, Booth. So, if you wouldn't mind lifting up your ass a little bit so I can yank these down, I'll know what part of my field pack I need to go grab to get the hardware to unlock—"

Feeling as if he had been chastised enough, Booth reached up, grabbed Brennan, and then rolled them over on to the bed. His hands came up to her bra, and he palmed her breasts through the thin material of the nude colored underwire bra. "Now, look. I told you, the Army has its regs."

"I don't care—" Brennan said flippantly, her annoyance still present in her voice. "But, damn it, Booth, it's taken me longer to get you stripped down than several homicide investigations I've participated in...I mean, for fuck's sake, I know I've ID'd multiple sets of bodies in Limbo in the amount of time it's taken to get you just to this point, and you're still not even naked yet—"

Not one to let a challenge like that go unanswered, Booth rolled away from her slightly, freeing his hands long enough to push the white cotton civvies off of his hips and down his legs. In the mean time, Brennan had rolled over on to her side and watched him with a clear look of intense interest in her eyes.

Kicking the offensive garment away, Booth stared at her proudly as he lifted his gaze to meet hers. He raised his index finger at her and pointed with a bit of a challenge coming into his voice. "Now, who's the one who's not naked here, ehh, Bones?"

Moving her leg slightly in the air, Brennan kicked enough to propel her from where she had been laying on her side so that she was in an upright position. Very, very quickly, she reached behind her back and unclasped the bra. Tossing it casually on the floor, she only took a few more seconds to lift her ass up and pull down the simple pair of white cotton string bikinis she was wearing. Again, she casually kicked them off the bed, and when she raised her eyes to meet Booth's, any witty retorts she had on the tip of her tongue instantly dissolved.

Booth, surprised at how patient he'd been able to be as she finished taking off her clothes, suddenly couldn't stay waiting on the sidelines any longer. His eyes had darkened to a black so deep, Brennan would've sworn the last time she had seen that particular color it was when she had mixed an old-fashioned ink packet in the lab. That was the last coherent thought she remembered having before he pounced, pulling them close together, so that when they stopped moving, Booth was on the bottom, and Brennan sat straddling him, a knee pinioned on each side of his thigh. Her eyes sparkled as she watched him, looking down at him in expectation, curious to see what he would do first.

His hands, finally able to touch and linger where he'd always wanted to go ,seemed to be at a loss as to what Booth should touch first, but the hesitation only lasted for a few seconds before his eyes focused on Brennan's breasts.

"I love you," Booth muttered, licking his lips in frenzied anticipation. "But, even if I didn't, I think I could learn to love you because you have, by far and away, one of the best pairs of tits I've ever seen."

Brennan laughed, a deep throaty chuckle, as she contemplated his words and then nodded. "Touch me," she encouraged him, her voice breathless as she couldn't manage to repeat anything more detailed than her initial invitation. "Touch me—"

He didn't need any further encouragement. His hands coming up to her breasts, he used his palms to cup each one simultaneously, loving the heavy feel of each one as he gently rolled them from side to side. Brennan closed her eyes, and swallowed once, as she allowed the sensations to wash over her. The delicate skin of the underside of her breasts was extremely soft, and Booth loved how silky felt against the rough and callused spots of his palms. He also was quite mesmerized when he felt Brennan relax a bit against him, falling forward as he continued to play with her, and moan softly.

"God—" she moaned again. "Oh, God, Booth."

Letting his hands fall away from where he had cupped her breasts, Booth took an index finger and used each hand to lightly begin tracing circles around her nipples, each a dusky rose in color that was just a couple of shades darker than the pale skin that was already flushed red with her arousal. Her nipples were already hard, but Booth continued to lightly touch them, drawing circles, first in clockwise, and then in counter clockwise movements. Brennan hissed as she felt her nipples continue to grow into tighter peaks, if such a thing were possible. "Stop teasing me," she finally growled. "It's not a very nice thing to do."

"I'm just doing what you told me to do, Bones," Booth lightly chided her. "You did say 'touch me'... and that's what I'm doing."

"Yeah, well, now it's time for you to touch me somewhere else, Booth," Brennan said. Shaking her head, she grabbed his hands and pushed them away from her breasts.

Leaning down, her hair fell forward. Now, cut much shorter than it had been seven months earlier, it wasn't long enough than to more than tickle Booth's neck and chest. But, when he inhaled deeply, he felt a pleasant tightening in his groin as he grew even harder at the familiar scent of honey, milk, vanilla, and amber—or, _Bones_, Booth thought simply.

Reaching up, he began to kiss her and soon they were lost in the ferociously fantastic duel of tongues. While no more than a few seconds passed, it seemed as if the two of them were competing to see either who could last the longest before passing out from oxygen deprivation _or _who could suck the other's soul (or in Brennan's case, metaphorical soul) out of the other.

Her body awake and energized with her growing arousal, Brennan's hands reached down and sought out the source of proud stiffness that she felt poking her first in the thigh, and later, when they had started kissing while rolling around on her bed, in her stomach. It was Booth's turn to hiss when Brennan grabbed him, but she kissed away the unpleasant sound as she murmured, "You're lucky I'm not as such a cruel a tease as you are."

She increased the pressure on her grasp just a little bit, and then pumped him once or twice to emphasize her point.

"Bones—" Booth growled.

"Like I said," Brennan replied, easing her group, "You're just lucky I'm not as mean as you are, Booth. Because, as much as I'd love to draw this out by pushing you to the edge by fisting and licking and sucking your cock until you were on the edge of mental oblivion, I'm not so cruel to keep both of us from doing what we really need to do right now."

Cracking open an eye, although Booth was fairly certain he knew what she meant, he muttered, "And, what's that?"

"To come," Brennan murmured, shifting her hip and lifting herself up just a bit as she positioned his cock at the entrance to her warm folds, moisture that had been dripping down her leg and onto his thighs now glistening on the tip of his penis that was already wet with his own precum. Releasing him, Brennan looked over and met Booth eyes as she whimpered, "Now?"

Reaching up, Booth brought both of his hands to meet hers as he intertwined his fingers with hers and then thrust up and into her in a single fluid movement. Caught slightly off guard, Booth smirked as he nodded and said, "No, not then." He stopped, held her eyes for a few seconds, and then, just to be difficult as he made his point, he smiled and said, "I think I prefer... now."

"Bastard," Brennan whimpered as she felt the length of him stretching her in a way that wasn't painful, but was a sensation that took a moment to adjust to since it had been so long since she'd had sex. "Such a bastard," she breathed, at that moment, twisting her pelvis as Booth tried to push even deeper into her although Brennan was already seated to the hilt.

"God, Bones—" Booth muttered, ignoring her earlier taunt. "Jesus...you feel...so fucking good."

She twisted again, and then felt a bit of desperation begin to seize her as she felt the first tell-tale signs of her impending orgasm starting to creep into her consciousness. "Booth," Brennan mumbled. "Move. Oh—move. Please move."

Only too happy to fulfill her simple command, Booth pushed his ass down into the softness of the bed's mattress at the same time Brennan lifted herself off his cock, before she plunged down on it again at the same time he thrust upwards. The pair fell into a perfectly synchronized rhythm. It took only a few strokes before Booth knew he was very, very close to coming. However, he used as much willpower as he could. He heard Brennan whimper again as her last efforts, the ones that had resulted in her impaling herself on his stiff cock, seemed to finally push her over the edge. The tell tale tightening of her walls all around him seemed to pull Booth even more deep into her, and that sensation alone would have been enough to push him on towards his climax. However, when he heard her moan his name, the world seemed to stop, and in that second, the span of a heartbeat, nothing existed for them outside that bed, and the connection that had been almost six years in the making—just him, just her.

"Booo-thhh," she cried, her voice hoarse and louder than she'd later remember she had been when she called out his name.

Collapsing against his chest, still warm, but now covered in sweat, Brennan was out of her head when she felt, but didn't analyze the sensations of Booth thrusting up into her one last time and then calling out _her _name, almost as if he were chanting a mantra. As she felt his warmth shoot up into her, Brennan closed her eyes and felt a different, but still pronounced second orgasm emanate from the center of her pelvic region. The unexpected, but very sweet release, made her relax into a pliant and utterly satisfied mass of warm contentment as she relaxed onto on his chest.

It took several minutes, the silence interrupted only by their breathing, before Booth finally shifted and looked down at Brennan. Lifting his head slightly, he placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head. Slowly, Brennan shifted in his arms, and when blue eyes met brown, she greeted him with a smile that, from that moment on, Booth decided would be one of his favorite mental images of all time.

"See?" he told her, after a minute. "I... I told you, Bones."

"What?" Brennan asked, her voice still soft and so utterly feminine that it pleased Booth in a way he never thought he'd wanted to be satisfied before Brennan had come to be in this place, in this time, like this, with him.

Reach down, he kissed her again, before he said with a warm smile. "You and me, Bones? As long as it's us—as long as we love each other... no matter what happens, we'll always get to where we need to go."

"That place being my bed replete with sexual satisfaction?" Brennan asked in a languid voice.

Grinning, Booth nodded. "That's just for starters, Bones. Just for starters."

And, in that moment, Brennan knew that Booth was right. But, that wasn't the important part. What _was _the important part was that they were there, together, in love, and would always get to where they needed to go... together.

* * *

><p>~The End~... or, is it? (See Author's Note #3 Below)<p>

* * *

><p><span>AN2: So, there it is. Here's the conclusion to what was an impromptu collaboration with _dharmamonkey_. And, on that note, it's worth saying that I've bestowed upon the wonderful _dharmamonkey_—who has collaborated on this piece more than she'd admit because what's she's done is way more than just the "Booth-y parts—the erstwhile and honorific title of "the Booth whisperer." She's asked what this meant, so I place before everyone a concrete definition. A "whisperer" in slang for "anyone with a strong affinity for a particular animal or being" who can understand and communicate with them in a way that few others are successful at achieving. Squint-to-nonsquint translation: she relates to Booth, understands him, and gets his character to do or say things—quite logically and realistically—that others can't. So, there you are. Everyone give her a proverbial round of applause. :)

And, now, since some of you guys asked for it, and have now received it, tell me, errr… okay, us, really, because this turned out to be an impromptu co-authoring adventure so really it's 'we'—how'd we do? Love it, hate it, indifferent? Normally, I don't give the shout out for reviews, but since this little plot bunny was tossed my way, and _dharmamonkey_ lifted a helping hand, some feedback for both of us would be really great—lurkers, regular reviewers, one and all who make writers happy writers would make us even more excitably ecstatic than we usually are—which might not be a good thing since we're usually a bit off the walls, but, oh well. Toss us a comment or two! Many thanks in advance… and thanks for reading!~

A/N3: Originally, this piece stood as a very long one-shot that got split into two parts. However, because of a certain bit of inspiration hitting a certain monkey's muse in the head—and then said monkey hitting me in the head—a sequel one-shot (again, split into two very long parts) was born. Instead of posting it under its own story to make certain nothing gets lost, please click on to part 3 to read the new additions. Enjoy!~


	3. Pt III: When She Found Them

When She Ran Away

By: Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

Rated: M

Disclaimer: We own nothing... Obviously. We're still just playing in someone else's sandbox for a bit. Ummm... yeah.~

Summary: Brennan returns from Maluku, meets Booth at the coffee cart, and refuses to hear about Hannah because she has a confession of her own to make. Brennan runs, Booth follows, and angsty physicality ensues. Set at the start of 6x01. AU.

A/N: So, this story update is, we think, a very good reason as to why it's an excellent idea to leave stories that you've already put on your alert list on your alert list—even if you think they're completed. Why? Because, surprise! It turns out this story wasn't done after all. I (Lesera128) initially had not planned to continue this story, as I was quite pleased with how it ended, and I considered it finished at the end of part II. However, at some point, a certain monkey's muse hit her over the head a few times with this idea, and then said monkey shanghaied me into bringing the story full circle, and dealing with the question—Booth and Brennan got together, all is right in the world, but... what about Hannah? So, parts III & IV have been born. Everyone will note that _dharmamonkey _shares the co-author credit, as this really was another collaboration of our warped and rapidly intertwined creative thought processes (not that the first two weren't, but you get the point). As such, everyone should be warned—there is a light at the end of the tunnel and the promise of a fluffy smut-filled happy ending for B&B. However, before you can get to that, like them (and us), you must suffer through the angst of Booth and Brennan facing Hannah's return and confronting all the issues that have to be dealt with by B&B as a result of said event. Our advice—if you can, stick it out. It's worth it, we promise.

As ever, if this type of fic isn't for you, that's fine with us. We understand. Happy fic hunting. Useless comments and flames are summarily ignored, but constructive criticism/feedback is cherished. As a final thought, this piece is angsty, uses strong language language, and contains some very suggestive imagery. If that's not your thing, turn back now. You've been warned. As for everyone else, proceed at your own risk.~

* * *

><p>Part III: When She Found Them<p>

* * *

><p>In the span of two weeks, Brennan's world had become a lot more colorful, a lot more interesting, a lot more satisfying—but, also, a lot more complicated. In the time since she returned to DC from her archaeological dig in the Northern Maluku Province of Indonesia, she'd spent the majority of her days in frenzied haze as she worked with the newly reformed Medico-Legal Lab of the Jeffersonian to solve the mysterious death of Logan Bartlett. When it turned out that the remains suspected of belonging to Logan Bartlett weren't his at all, but actually belonged to a Korean toddler named Kang Myung Dae, who'd accidentally choked to death, the homicide case became a missing person's investigation. Soon after that, Carrie Bartlett was reunited with her very much alive two-year old son. Logan Bartlett had been found alive and well and returned to his mother after it became apparent that Trevor Barlett had kept his from his mother in a despicable case of parental kidnapping. Afterwards, Brennan had been more than pleased to focus on the task of helping Cam to reestablish the lab—facilities, personnel, supplies, and all. Each day, she worked from sun-up to sun-down on the lab, almost as if to apologize to the lab for any offense it may have taken at her prolonged absence.<p>

However, once the sun went down, the question of how Brennan spent her nights was another matter entirely. Instead of spending her time toiling away at casework, or identifying backlogged remains from Limbo, or aimlessly wandering her apartment in some type of miserable funk that had characterized Brennan's nights more than seven months prior, she had actually developed a social life—a quite _enjoyable _and _very _pleasing social life. And, the main reason why there was such a difference between the pre-Maluku Brennan and the post-Maluku Brennan—and the reason why her days differed so drastically when compared to her nights—took the shapely and very aesthetically pleasing 6'1'' form of one Special Agent Seeley J. Booth.

But for the Bartlett case, Booth's caseload was nonexistent. He had his plate full transitioning from life as an active Special Forces soldier back to being an active FBI agent. The majority of Booth's days were hellaciously busy as he attempted to reintegrate himself into the daily grind of the Hoover. Each day, Booth found himself faced with a new set of tasks—with everything from redecorating _his _reclaimed office so that it was just so to pilfering new agents and technicians for reassignment to his field detail. So, in the grand scheme of things, Booth was just as busy as Brennan during the days. He also really didn't have any excuses to visit the lab until the FBI was satisfied that both parties were capable of actively taking on case work once again. But, the nights were a different matter entirely.

However, each night—every single night for the entire two weeks they had been back in D.C.—neither Brennan or Booth had spent it alone. While it was true that they didn't exactly have a standing agreement to meet at either his apartment or hers each night for sex—although to be honest, indulging in the new physical aspect of their relationship was still a novelty, and so on _almost _all the nights they had sex at _least_ once—they hungered for one another's company after so prolonged a separation. Greedy to cocoon themselves in a space where they didn't have to share their new found intimacy with anyone quite yet, they had yet to share news of the significant alteration in their relationship. Soon enough, both knew, they would have to tell family members, friends, co-workers, and administrators at both the Hoover and the Jeffersonian. But, for now, it was enough that they kept their little secret just between the two of them.

True to Booth's pronouncement on the night before they made love for the first time, and every day since then, Brennan had stopped running and Booth had stopped having to chase after her—but for the turn of events that had brought them to Rock Creek Park on an early Saturday morning.

The morning had started off as a fairly promising one. Booth still was getting used to waking up with Brennan wrapped around him as if she were the most skilled of contortionists, and he was her favorite prop. On that morning, when they awoke, Brennan had twisted so that she was curved around Booth's back since he had shifted onto his stomach at some point in the night. When he cracked open an eyelid and felt her familiar, but heavy ,weight pressing down on him, Booth grinned and shifted slightly to try to awaken her. Several minutes later, and only after he had begun to tickle her sides, Brennan had grudgingly awakened. However, instead of engaging in their customary way of saying good morning by having sex, Brennan had rolled over to her side of the bed, yawned, glanced at the bright morning sun flooding through her windows—the first non-rainy morning they'd had in three days—and then, with a yawn, asked Booth if he still had his gym bag in the SUV. A half an hour after that, having felt the need to burn off some energy before breakfast, and ready to enjoy the sunny weather before the day's overwhelming heat would descend upon them, Brennan cajoled Booth into joining her for a morning run. At first, he had grumbled a bit, but when she promised that she'd cook him a huge breakfast upon their return to her apartment—bacon included—he'd capitulated.

And, so, it was that they found themselves at the park, running a comfortably demanding circuit. There was a bit of playfulness in the air when they first began to jog. However, when Brennan finished her part of the circuit that she qualified as her warm-up, she shot Booth a look—as if to say _time out while we actually do something productive here_—and popped in her iPod ear buds. Turning up the music, she began to increase her speed, only glancing back every so often to make certain that Booth had kept pace with her. About twenty-five minutes later, she had finished running a respectable four-mile or so portion of the jogging loop and was feeling rather pleased with herself. Glancing at Booth, who was still jogging beside her even though he was somewhat sweatier and breathing more heavily than she, Brennan smiled as she pulled off her earbuds and nodded at him. "You okay?"

Slowing down, drawing in several deep breaths and then exhaling them, Booth smiled a lopsided grin at her. "Just back from a seven-month deployment in Afghanistan, Bones. This is sorta a piece of cake compared to that."

Making a face, she said, "So, the excessive rapidity of your respirations doesn't indicate that you're not too tired to make things a bit more interesting?"

"Hmmm... what'd ya have in mind, Bones?"

"Last one back to the car is springing for a bottle of good champagne for mimosas on the way back home," Brennan grinned. "And, the loser has to serve said mimosas to the winner...in bed...completely naked."

He eyed her for a moment and then gave a curt nod of appreciative agreement. "You're on," Booth grunted.

Brennan let out a yelp of excitement as she propelled herself forward as soon as Booth verbalized his acceptance of her terms. Booth scowled, contemplating calling out after her something to complain about her not being fair in telling him when they were actually starting. However, he thought better of wasting the time and energy, and he merely took off after her instead in a merry chase. Thus, because of Brennan's slight head start, by the time that the pair had made it back to the parking lot where they had left her car, she was ahead of Booth by a span of at least a good fifty feet. She squealed in a very undignified and very un-Brennan-like manner as she put on an extra burst of speed when she heard Booth's heavy footfall indicate he was closing ground on her as they pulled within the last few footsteps of the finish line. Throwing everything she had into the last few steps, she threw herself against the driver's side car door. Brennan didn't even wince as she made contact with the cold metal of her Prius, colliding with her car door since she was unable to slow her momentum enough to prevent running into it. If her own movements weren't enough to leave a bruise the next day, when Booth caught up to her, and lightly slammed himself into her, pushing the two of them up against the car, she knew she'd definitely have a mark or two caused by the force of their collision.

Pressing himself against her, her back pushed up against the driver's side door, Booth was sweating profusely and gasping for breath as he downed huge gulps of air, but stared at her intently. "Not...fair," he managed at last.

"I won," Brennan laughed, shaking her head, but loving the feel of Booth's toned body pushed up against hers, the hard musculature of his torso and thighs quite prominent through the thin material of his worn grey FBI t-shirt and dark sweat pants.

"No," Booth grunted. "You...cheated."

Looking up into his eyes, Brennan smiled with an evil glint shining at him, as she replied, "So, what if I did, Booth? Is this your way of telling me you're going to punish me somehow?"

"Well," he laughed between panting breaths. "Maybe... maybe I'll just arrest you."

"Oh, no," she said with short shake of her head. "You don't mean... not the—"

Booth put his hands on his hips and grinned. "Oh yes," he said, sticking his tongue out and waggling it suggestively. "The handcuffs," he said with a wink.

"Wait," she said, waving her hand at him in protest. "Wait a minute. Does it count as punishment since I brought it up first? I mean, it was really my idea when we talked about it in passing the other night..."

"Good point," he laughed with a shrug. "I suppose that depends on how I decide to put them to use, huh?"

"Hmmmm," Brennan murmured. "I'm not sure if I should be concerned or delighted."

Booth leaned in and wrapped his hands around Brennan's waist, his fingers creeping to the elastic waistband of her jogging pants. "Well, I can't speak to your concern, but I can just about guaran-damn-tee that you'll be 'delighted' before those handcuffs and I get finished with you."

"Promise?" she asked with a slight laugh of her own.

"You know me, Bones," Booth groaned as he leaned into her. "I'm a man of my word."

"Excellent," Brennan said as she bent forward and brought her lips to his. Booth felt her laugh into their kiss, a deep rumble that further inflamed him. He deepened their kiss, pulling her tightly against him, his hands snaking around her waist to caress the soft skin in the small of her back. Unable to resist, Booth's hand came to the top of her black pants, pulled them away slightly, and let his fingers dip below the slick material of her Lycra pants, and he started to stroke the delicate skin above the cleft of her ass. In response, Brennan thrust her hips forward and moaned again. His resolve and self-control quickly disappearing, Booth began to wonder how in the hell they were going to get back to her apartment in time to finish this thing that had just ignited like the first stages of an actual case of spontaneous human combustion when he knew he needed to slow them down—just for a little bit.

"Bones," he whispered against her ear, in between kisses.

Her only response was a pleasurable groan that made the tiny hairs on the back of Booth's neck stand up straight on end in a very_, very_ satisfying way. As Brennan turned her head back to face Booth's, she opened her mouth wider. Her tongue darted out and attempted to draw his deeper into her own.

They had been standing like that for some time, although neither one knew how long and were slightly oblivious to what was going on in the mostly empty parking lot. However, the one thing they eventually couldn't ignore was the light scuffling of a pair of feet in the gravel of the parking lot, a sharp intake of breath, and then a female voice calling out a single word: "Seeley?"

Slowly, Booth pulled away from Brennan, his body tensing, as he grimaced. _That voice_, he thought. _I know that voice. But, that's not possible. There's no way...she's_—_naaw, it's not possible._

However, as he slowly turned around—Brennan moaning in protest at the sudden absence of Booth's warm lips on hers—he came face-to-face with a familiar set of questioning blue eyes staring back at him, a mixed look of surprise, confusion, and disbelief present on her face.

"Seeley?" she repeated.

"Hannah—" Booth breathed. "What are you doing here?"

"I-I...I came to see you," Hannah said. "I tried stopping by the Hoover first, but someone in your office said that you were off today."

"Well, it's Saturday, Hannah. Normally, I don't work the weekends unless there's a case," Booth said.

Brennan froze as she suddenly realized that although she recognized the name, she'd had no idea as to the actual identity of the woman who had come so close to stealing away her happiness. And, now, almost as if she had appeared like something out of a bad dream, here she was in the flesh. _Hannah_, Brennan thought, her eyes darting up and down the woman who had interrupted them. _Oh, God—of course, she's a blonde. Of course. God, Booth—_

Hannah's eyes darted back and forth from Booth to Brennan and back again as she said, "I, uh, figured that out eventually," Hannah said. "But, when you weren't there, and they wouldn't tell me where you lived, I wracked my brain trying to remember where you said you spent your down time, and I stopped by here on a chance."

"Wow," Booth said, shaking his head slowly. "Uhh, I can't believe that you're here."

Her eyes narrowing in suspicion, Hannah crossed her arms as she nodded at Brennan. "You weren't expecting me, clearly."

"No," Booth said, shaking his head. "No, I wasn't." He paused and the nodded at her. "Hannah, what are you doing here?"

"I came—I came to see you," Hannah explained, a bit of uncertainty creeping into her voice.

"Why?" Booth blurted out the single question impulsively.

"Uh, well, because—" Hannah said, her voice trailing off before she added lamely, "I wanted to surprise you."

"Yeah, well," Booth nodded, inclining his head with a sharp nod. "Mission accomplished. I sure as hell am _definitely _surprised."

Uncrossing her arms, Hannah pointed at Brennan. "You're not the only one, Seeley." Tilting her head, she bit her lip as she said, "What's going on here? Who is she...and why are you touching her like that?"

In that minute, Brennan didn't care what she looked like. She didn't care that she had just run four miles in less than half an hour, was sweating profusely, and was quite dehydrated. She didn't care that she was dressed in a soaked sleeveless t-shirt, or a sports bra that was so damp that it was clinging to her in a way that she knew would chafe the delicate skin of her breasts if she didn't change soon, or the fact that her worn running shoes were scuffed and, although quite comfortable, had seen better days. She knew her face was flushed, her hair frizzy, and she wasn't wearing any makeup or perfume. But, in that minute, none of that mattered as she stared at the woman who stood before her.

_Hannah_, Brennan thought, immediately realizing that the word echoed in her mind the same way as several more taboo curses and colorful metaphors often did. It was the only word that Brennan could allow herself to think, even mentally, lest the tidal wave of emotion that was being held back by a very flimsy dam of self-control was to overwhelm her: _Hannah_.

_Of course, _she finally allowed herself to think. _Of course, it's her. Who else could it be? Of course, she'd come back. It's only logical, it's only rational. She made the same mistake I did. It just didn't take her as long to realize what she'd done. After all, isn't that what I would do if I were in her place? _Brennan stopped and then thought wryly, _Isn't that what I did do myself not two weeks ago?_

Even in her sneakers, Brennan stood at least three inches taller than the blonde woman. She was thin, perhaps no more than 120 pounds—Brennan could also tell that there was no way her measurements were fuller than a B-cup. The thought caused Brennan to continue her analysis of her anatomical structure with a critical eye. She had a rather short torso, but very long legs. While attractive in her own way, Brennan couldn't help but note that she bore several similarities to Booth's traditional type, as represented by exes like Rebecca and Tessa—minus the aberrations to the pattern as represented by Cam and herself. Her hair was long, wavy, and—not surprisingly—blonde. Her blue eyes, Brennan thought ironically, seemed to be of a color similar to her own. However, her bone structure clearly marked her of what was probably either Russian or Ukrainian descent. She stood dressed in what was best described, according to the fashion magazines that Angela kept leaving in her office (because she kept 'hoping') as "casual chic." Standing in front of them, she wore a fitted dark brown leather jacket over a cream colored tank top and slim-fitting, light blue stonewashed jeans. A black belt contrasted between the brown leather of her jacket and the matching dark brown kitten heel boots she wore. Her makeup, while understated, was clearly present highlighting her good cheekbones and thin lips.

Her hands on her hips in what was clearly a defensive posture, it was those pair of lips that was now drew into a deep frown as her eyes darted up and down Brennan's disheveled figure.

Silence weighed heavily among the trio, and Booth seemed at a loss for how to answer Hannah's question. Not one to be waylaid, Hannah turned to face Brennan. "I'm sorry, who are you again?" Hannah finally asked, a distinct edge to her voice.

"Brennan," came the sharp response. "Dr. Temperance Brennan of the Jeffersonian Institute."

"Oh, my God," Hannah said, spinning on her heels to face Booth. "Your partner?"

"Yes," Booth sighed cautiously.

"The same one that did all those things to make you as miserable as you were when I met you?" Hannah asked again.

"No—" Booth began, glancing over to Brennan to gauge her reaction to Hannah's statement. "No, that's not—look, Hannah. That's not really what happened. You can't just—you have to be fair here—"

"I'm... well, I'm just using the same words to describe her that you did, Seeley." She stopped and then shook her head in confusion. "So, then, this _isn't _the same woman who broke your heart?" Hannah questioned him.

"Yes, she is, but—"

_Awwwww, hell. _Booth winced when he heard a sharp intake of breath from beside him, but he didn't break eye contact with Hannah. _Damn._

"I'm confused, Seeley," Hannah said. "Which is it? Either this is or isn't the woman who you said, and I quote, 'gouged the heart out of your chest when it was still beating, skewered it with a fillet knife—several times, and then handed it back to on a silver platter before she expected you to say _thank you_.'"

_Holy Mary, Mother of God, _he muttered silently, briefly glancing upwards and away from Hannah's piercing stare. _This is not happening. This is so not happening._

"Don't say it like that," Booth said, shaking his head at Hannah. This time, he glanced back to Brennan, the plea in his eyes apparent as he stuttered, "That sounds much worse than how it sounded when I actually said it."

"And, yet, you did say it, didn't you, Booth?" Brennan said quietly. He swung his head and looked at her, the color suddenly having drained from his cheeks and mirroring the paleness that had washed over his partner.

"Yes," Hannah answered for Booth, apparently capable of hearing even the quietest of whispers. She nodded as she added, "He said that...and then some."

Brennan's eyes flashed at Hannah's words. She had to bite the inside of her lip from saying something.

Again, Booth looked at her with sorrow clear in his eyes. "I didn't mean _any _of it, Bones. _None _of it—"

"It certainly sounded like you did at the time, Seeley," Hannah chimed in as Booth's head snapped in her direction.

_Oh, Jesus, _he swore silently. He turned to face his ex-lover. "You know what, Hannah?" he growled, pointing an angry finger at her. "This really isn't the time or the place to be talking about this, okay? Now, if you would just please—"

"You know what, Seeley? You're right," Hannah said. Looking at him with a deeply furrowed brow, she then continued, "So, let's go on to the next topic of discussion. Fortunately, I have a question that we can use to kick off the debate. What I'd like to know is why, if this is your partner, and she wasn't the woman who broke your heart—or, hell, even if she did—then why...why are you kissing her?" She stopped, shook her head and then said, "I thought you told me the whole reason why you never hooked up with her was because the FBI had some rule about agents not being able to date other Bureau employees."

Her voice sharp, Brennan leaned forward and immediately preempted Booth's response. "I'm _not _an employee of the FBI. I work for the Jeffersonian Institute. The FBI is merely fortunate enough, on occasion, to benefit from my willingness to consult with them on certain cases."

Hannah looked over at Brennan, but instead of being intimidated, merely inclined her head to indicate her error. "My mistake. I apologize for the inaccuracy of my statement." Brennan, slightly mollified, nodded. Hannah, however, not done, looked back to Booth and said, "So, what is this, Seeley? I thought you told me that you two were just friends."

"_Close_ friends," Booth corrected her.

"Fine," Hannah sighed. "'Close' friends," she amended her statement. "Even close friends don't stick their tongues as far down their throats as you had yours down hers about five minutes ago."

"We were close friends," Booth said, feeling his jaw tighten and his shoulders tense as he tried to explain the complicated series of events that had brought he and Brennan to where they were now over the course of the past two weeks. "We were, but—"

Tried of seeing Booth fumbling for the proper words, Brennan jumped in again, attempting to answer Hannah's question. "But, now, we're not. Since we've been back, a lot's happened, and things have changed between us—"

Reaching out, Booth placed a light hand on her shoulder and shook his head. "Bones, _please_," he said softly as he shot her a pleading look. _This is not how I wanted this to go, _he thought grimly.

Brennan, her eyes darting to his hand, eventually nodded slowly. Booth shot her a look of gratitude and then let out a short breath of relief. Letting his hand fall to his side, he turned back to the blonde reporter who watched their exchange with a keen interest.

"Hannah," he said firmly, taking a step towards her, holding his hand out, his fingers splayed defensively as he chewed his lip. "Listen, alright? Please? Let me explain."

Brennan narrowed her eyes. "_Let me explain," _he'd said to _her _just two weeks earlier. _"Can we go somewhere…private? To talk? So I can explain? Please?" _She felt the pressure against her temples deepen as her masseter muscle contracted, tightening her jaw as she stared at the pair in front of her. _God, Booth. What's going on? What's happening... what's going to happen now? _

"Did you lie to me, Seeley?" Hannah asked, her voice having suddenly deteriorated into a caustic mixture of warning and disbelief. "I mean, really, when we first met, I didn't know how such a great guy like you could be unattached, but I thought, okay, maybe it's just one of those lucky things where I was in the right place at the right time. But, I wasn't, was I? You lied to me when you said you weren't in a relationship with anyone—"

"No," Booth said firmly, his voice crackling with emotion at the insinuation. "I didn't lie to you, Hannah."

"I don't care if whatever's happened just happened between you two in the two weeks since you've been back, Seeley," Hannah said bitterly. "But, you can't tell me that you can have that type of unspoken communication and ability to read one another's body language after being in whatever the hell type of relationship that you two have had going on for how knows how long...relationship, fling, or weird fuck-buddies thing you've got going on here and want to call it. _That _doesn't just happen after two weeks, Seeley. It takes longer—much, _much _longer for that type of rapport to develop." She glanced once more in Brennan's direction and glared at Booth. "So, are you really going to try and tell me again that you weren't lying to me?"

_She ha_s_ no idea, _he thought. _She's never worked with anyone as closely as I have worked with Bones. Hannah's a bit of a lone wolf—the way I used to be before I met Bones. If she only knew what it was like to work together the way Bones and I do, spending long days together riding around from one crime scene to another, interviewing witnesses together, interrogating suspects together, facing death together, the long nights of case paperwork and Thai takeout and celebratory drinks and guy hugs—well, then maybe she'd understand..._

He took a deep breath, trying to hold back the creeping tide of frustration. "I _never_ lied to you. _Never_," he growled, clenching his fists in anger. "And, even if you don't know anything else about me by now, I know I told you before that I'm not the type of guy who does that. I don't cheat. I never have, and I _never _will—"

She considered his words and then tilted her head. "Okay," Hannah said. "Fair enough."

"Good," Booth muttered. _But, _he said to himself. _I know there's a 'but.' There's always a 'but.'_

"But," Hannah said. "You certainly didn't tell me the entire truth either, Seeley. And, to be honest, I don't know which thing I want to know more about first—why you hid things from me or why you're here with another woman and had your hands all over her touching her like that."

Booth's brain flashed back to what he and Brennan had been doing before Hannah's familiar voice trilled through the air and had began this trip down the rabbit hole. The more he struggled to recall specifics, the less he could remember besides the fact that they had been making out, with Booth pressing Brennan against the side of her car, in what could easily be described as him having reached at _least _second base...admittedly, with some possible technical arguments that he was rounding second and heading towards third since his hands had been playing with the waistband of her jogging pants and panties. He felt an itching in his fingertips as he remembered the silky smooth feel of her skin as he dragged his fingers along the soft swell of flesh where her heart-shaped ass met her slender back. _God, you felt good. Just one touch, and I'm gone. Wow. Just, oh_, _wow, Bones_—

For some random reason, Hannah took Booth's unrelated silence—as he momentarily became lost in the thought of Brennan's body—as a sign that she should continue. With a slow shake of her head, she said, "I mean, I don't get it, Seeley. I just don't understand, so—" Her voice trailed off for a few seconds as she collected her thoughts. "I...please. Tell me what I'm missing here. Please, explain to me what's going on here."

Sighing in exasperation, Booth reluctantly pushed the images of Brennan's body out of his mind and refocused on Hannah as he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He then tried to figure out a way to get out of this situation as quickly as possible in the least painful manner. Taking a breath, Booth opted for the direct manner to try and finish the conversation-from-hell as quickly as possible and get Hannah on her way. _The sooner the better, _Booth thought. Nodding at her, he began, "Look, what Bones said, it was true. A lot's happened in the past two weeks."

"How can that much happen in two weeks?" Hannah asked incredulously. "It's only been fourteen days, Seeley."

_Bones told me she loved me_, Booth answered mentally. _She told me she loved me, and the world changed, Hannah._ _The world changed.__  
><em>

"Look, I—"

"I mean, okay," Hannah interrupted him. "Let's just start at the beginning, Seeley. Did something happen since you've been back?" Hannah asked suddenly, her impatience for his explanation growing with each second that passed. "I know you told me when we first met that someone broke your heart before you deployed. And, I know that in the first week or two, you wouldn't shut up about your partner, but I never guessed they were the same two people." She stopped, and then tilted her head at Booth before she asked, "I like to think that I can read people pretty well, Seeley. It's kind of a skill I need to have as a journalist. So, tell me. Did I miss something that I shouldn't have missed...or were you just hiding it from me?" Her blue eyes turned steely gray. "Just to get into my pants? That night under the fig tree?"

"Now wait one damn minute," he hissed. "I _never_ came on to you. You came on to _me_."

"I guess that's a point open to interpretation," Hannah retorted. "At the very least, you didn't exactly resist. As I recall, you were actually quite enthusiastic about things—"

"And, you were the one who offered for me saving your life, as _I _recall, Hannah. Remember, you told me you wanted me to know how 'grateful' you were?" Booth shot back.

"Like I said," Hannah said. "I don't remember you putting up that much of a fight when I suggested how I wanted to say thank you to you that night."

_Oh, God, _Booth groaned silently. _We're so not having this conversation._

"Stop it," Booth said, holding up his index finger in warning, realizing the moment he made the gesture, no sign or gesture was going to stop the runaway train of Hannah's jilted anger. "Just stop it." He took another deep breath and tried to slow the rapid spin of his scattered thoughts. "Look it—it's complicated," Booth began to explain.

"No," Hannah said, shaking her head. "No, it's not. Don't do that. Don't do that guy thing where you try to make this more complicated than it has to be. Don't give me excuses, Seeley. It is what it is, so how can something like this be such a big thing that's so very complicated?"

At that, Hannah looked over at Brennan. "Did he ever tell you how we met?"

Booth felt a gut-twisting wave of panic pass through him as the question dangled briefly in the air between the two women.

After glancing at him with a very telling look in her eyes that seemed to say _why am I hearing this from her?, _Brennan shook her head and replied simply, "No."

"It was my second day on assignment with his unit in Marja," Hannah began. "I was going to interview a Taliban leader, and I was heading to a cafe, walking across this little town square, when an insurgent opened fire." She paused, her eyes looking away as she replayed the memory in her head. After a few seconds, she raised her eyes to meet Brennan's and smiled. "Anyway, Seeley was there. I didn't notice at the time. He was hidden, of course. I was scrambling for cover, the sniper still firing when I heard another shot ring out, the sniper dropped—wounded, not killed, because he might have information." She stopped again, and then shook her head lightly as her smile widened. "Seeley never went for the kill unless he could help it."

"I know that," Brennan said quietly. Then, although she was talking to Hannah, Brennan's eyes locked with Booth's as she said, "He saved your life."

"Yes," Hannah said solemnly. "He did."

"And, you embarked on a sexual relationship after that?" Brennan asked.

Hannah nodded. "But, it wasn't just a sexual relationship, Dr. Brennan. It was much more than that—" She stopped and then amended softly, "At least, it was—is— to me. And, I-I...I thought it was to him, too."

As she let her final words trail off, Hannah looked over at Booth as she said, "So, it's a simple question, Seeley. Given...given everything that happened between us, what I _thought _we meant to each other, I'm just wondering—what happened? What changed? Because I really need to know. For a guy who doesn't cheat, I'd really like to know when you started banging your partner so I can figure out how pissed off I need to be here. I mean, am I the one who was being cheated on…or, is it the other way around, and I'm the other woman? Either way, I really need to know."

"I told you," Booth said, his anger growing rapidly. "I didn't cheat on _anyone_, Hannah. Not on Bones, not on you, not on anyone. I never have, and I never will. Not ever."

"Right," she said derisively. "So, can you please explain to me why—when we saw each other less than two weeks ago and had one of the best goddamn nights together that either one of us has ever had in our entire lives—that suddenly I was so forgettable that you've already moved on to greener pastures? I mean, come on, Seeley. I've now come more than seven thousand miles and found that you've already shacked up with my replacement? How in the hell did that happen?" Hannah asked. She stopped for just a few seconds, and shook her head sadly as she added, "I thought I knew you better than that, Seeley. I thought what we had…what we felt for each other, that it was real—that it was the real deal. After everything that happened, after everything we shared, I thought you meant what you told me. Do you remember?"

Booth sighed and looked away as Hannah stared at him intently.

"Do you remember?" Hannah pressed again.

Again, Booth remained quiet.

"Seeley!" Hannah said.

At the use of his first name, Booth finally met her eyes.

"Do you remember?" Hannah asked for a third time.

"Yes."

"I thought you meant it," Hannah said quietly. "When we were in bed together, and you rolled over, looked in my eyes, and told me that what we had was something really special—"

The word choice, combined with the visual image she described, was a particularly bad one for Hannah to have used, as it fueled Brennan's reflexive responses. The word choice, particularly, was quite unfortunate, echoing as it did, the emotional catharsis that had stemmed from one of Brennan's deepest fears being realized—that Hannah had replaced her. Quite certain, however, that holding onto indignant anger would at least keep her from breaking down into a panicked, sobbing emotional wreck, Brennan at that moment stepped in and gave Hannah the answer she'd been trying to get from Booth quite unsuccessfully to that point in time.

"No," Brennan said, knowing that she had angered Booth as soon as she edged in between where he stood facing Hannah, pushing him aside with the back of her forearm. However, knowing she was past the point of no return, she continued on when Hannah's eyes snapped from Booth's to hers. "No," she said. "It was what it was, Ms. Burley."

"Did Seeley tell you that?" Hannah asked.

"No—"

"Then, how can you know what I mean to him?"

"Because," Brennan insisted. "I know him. And, while I'm sure it was quite meaningful at the same, I'm sorry to have to tell you that it wasn't... 'special' beyond the confines of the situation and specific context in which it occurred, Ms. Burley."

"Bones," Booth, not liking the feeling that the situation was quickly spiraling out of control. "Please..."

Hannah ignored Booth and turned her hardened gaze at Brennan. She narrowed her eyes and, for the first time, a strong thread of malice seemed to have become woven into her voice as she asked, "And, who in the hell do you think you are to tell me something like that? You don't know me. You said it yourself—he never told you about us. So, what can you really say here? What can you possibly know about Seeley that I don't—?"

"A great many things," Brennan began slowly.

Shaking her head, Hannah replied, "Or, maybe you don't know him as well as you think you do."

The retort cut Brennan probably more than Hannah knew or even intended. _Maybe she's right,_ a small voice echoed in Brennan's mind. _I mean, how...the things she's described_—_having sex under a fig tree? Out in the open, in public? With a woman he had just met because she wanted to say 'thank you' to him? I can't imagine the Booth I know ever doing something like that, and yet, clearly, he did. I don't know how or why he did, but obviously, since they had sex under a damn fig tree, maybe she's right_—

Brennan looked over at Booth, who again, seemed more intent on watching her than responding to Hannah. She couldn't deal with the weight of his stare as she raised her eyes to Hannah, and said, "I must admit that I do have a tendency to sometimes over-assess my capabilities. But, not in this." She stopped and then nodded, "I know him quite, quite intimately, Ms. Burley," Brennan said, leveling her stare at the blonde reporter, letting the double meaning of the statement hit home.

"And, you're sure about that?" Hannah pressed. "Because, you weren't there to see all the damage you'd done to him when I met him in Afghanistan. He was...well, I'm just glad I was able to be there to help pick up all the pieces that you shattered."

Brennan swallowed once, feeling as if she'd been knifed in the stomach by Hannah's words. Her eyes darted to Booth, and seemed to ask—_Was it really that bad? You said it was bad, but if it was __that_ b_ad, how can everything that's happened between us have happened? How could you put yourself in that type of danger again, Booth? How can you even risk me doing something again that I've already done once if it was as bad as she says? How can you trust me like that? And, most importantly, even if you can trust me...how can I trust myself around you?_

Slowly, Brennan looked at Hannah and then told her, "You may have had sexual intercourse with him under a Ficus of the _Moraceae _family because you proverbially hit him over the head in a particularly vulnerable moment, but that doesn't mean you know him—"

"Oh, but I do—" Hannah insisted, jutting her chin out definitely. "I can assure you, I know him very, _very _well, Dr. Brennan."

Brennan straightened her back, ignoring Booth's seething angry looks that had quickly turned to silent pleading—both of which she disregarded as she continued, unable to let Hannah's slight of her person go unaddressed.

"If Booth told you anything about me, Ms. Burley, I'm sure then that he hopefully conveyed I am a blunt person. So, let me speak plainly. The only reason you got as far as you did with Booth was because I made a mistake. You benefited from that error on my part, and I can assure you such a mistake will not happen again. I'm sure, from your perspective, it was fortuitous for you that you were able to benefit from it as you have, but don't expect to do so again." She paused and then tilted her head as she said, "It would be wise for you to understand that your prior sexual relationship does not give you any claim on him whatsoever. The man with whom you had sex in Afghanistan is not the same man you see before you now—" _Or, at least, I hope he's not_, Brennan thought to herself. "It would be a logical and prudent choice for you to heed my counsel and cease and desist in your efforts to re-initiate any type of intimate relationship between the two of you." She tilted her head and then asked, "Do you understand?"

Booth stood there, his mouth hanging open in silent shock.

"Seeley," Hannah said through gritted teeth, turning her icy gaze to Booth. "Are you just going to stand there like a deaf-mute and let her do all the talking for you?"

"Hannah," Booth began again, his voice taut with a ragged edge of anger. "Wait. Look—"

"Ms. Burley," Brennan said, cutting him off again. "The proper term is 'hearing-impaired.' The term 'deaf-mute' is now considered inaccurate, since most hearing-impaired people can communicate either by speech or via sign language. It's also, you should know working within the journalistic profession from a public relations perspective, considered highly offensive and derogatory to people in the hearing-impaired community."

Booth held up his hand to silence his partner. "Bones," he said, his low voice tinged with aggravation at both women. _God, the only thing that's missing is the mud._ Turning to Hannah, he said, "Look, Hannah. Back up for a minute. You're acting like the last time we saw each other it was when we made some grand sorta promise to one another. But, we both know—that's not what happened. Do you remember the conversation we had before you left?"

Now, it was Hannah's time to look away.

"Do you remember?" Booth pressed her.

Still, his question was met with silence.

"Hannah!"

"Yes," she finally said, looking at him. "Yes, I remember."

"Then, you know," Booth said. "You know that we talked about this—about us, before you left."

At the use of the term 'us', Brennan again felt as if she'd been physically struck, but she remained quiet.

"I remember the last conversation we had, Seeley, yes," Hannah began. She stopped for a minute before continuing. Her blue eyes flashed with a fury that Booth had never seen in her before, and as they hardened her light blue irises into cold ice chips, Booth wondered why he'd never noticed how unpleasant her hardness could make her look. "I remember our last conversation," Hannah repeated. "But, really, Seeley?" she sneered. "What do you think we talked about exactly, because, obviously, you and I seem to have had two separate conversations—or, I must've missed that part where you told me you were planning to shack up with someone else as soon as you hit American soil." She shook her head. "I'm sorry. Clearly, I should've been paying closer attention, but at the time I guess I was too busy sucking your dick and swallowing your—"

"What?" he squeaked.

For a fraction of a second, Booth forgot himself as he recalled the way Hannah's lips looked and felt around him—warm, wet, and pleasant. He recalled the sensation of her head moving up and down as she sucked, the pressure helping guide him onto relief. But, then his mind flashed to another sight, one that pleased both his body and his mind. He thought of how much more magnificent it felt to have Brennan's mouth around him, feeling so warm and wet as the point of her tongue dragged along the underside of his cock, and she brought him somewhere, both physically and emotionally, that he'd never been with anyone else. _It's the whole deal with you, Bones. Always has been, always will be... __wait—what?_

Booth's jaw fell open as the words tumbled out of her mouth. He was certain that this entire conversation was a dream, a really bad dream, one from which he would surely soon wake up. The tips of his ears burned red with fury and he felt panic swirl in his belly as he dreaded how Brennan would receive Hannah's words.

"Now, wait one damn minute!" he yelled.

After Hannah's closing remark, he had quickly forgotten her comment about his shacking up with Brennan. He considered how, just two minutes earlier, he had wanted to let Hannah down as lightly as possible, but after what she had said—to him, in front of Brennan—he was sure that wasn't possible. After what she had said, it didn't matter, anyway, and wouldn't make one damn bit of difference once he said what he needed to say to her. He glanced at Brennan, who stood there like a tigress ready to pounce, her hands on her hips, her lips pursed and her eyebrows raised expectantly. He tilted his head to the side and cracked his neck.

"Damn it, Hannah," he said. "We talked about this, and you know it. That night before you left for Kirkuk?" He narrowed his eyes, watching her as he recalled that night. "You knew I had five months left in my deployment, and that you were going to be in Iraq for the rest of my tour, and we decided to let things stay casual. Remember? I didn't ask you, and you didn't ask me, and we were both okay with that—"

The reporter glared at him. "I didn't know you were going home early," she interrupted, a certain petulance in her tone.

Booth grunted. "What does that matter? That doesn't matter at all, Hannah. It's irrelevant," he said. "You were leaving, and as far as either of us knew at that point, I was staying. Don't you remember what you said that night? I asked you, if you recall, I asked you how you wanted to play this thing between us. I said I didn't want to let what we had go and wanted something more firm, but that's not what you wanted. You said—and these are your exact words because I remember them _exactly_—you said that my offer tempted you, but that you weren't sure if you were ready to make that type of commitment and so that the best you could offer me was that we'd 'play it by ear.'"

He stood next to Brennan's driver side door, clenching and unclenching his jaw, as he thought about their last night together in her quarters in Qūryah. Hannah had lain there next to him in her bunk, both of them dazed in the post-coital glow of very strong orgasms. She had been nuzzled in the crook of his arm, her fair skin sticky with their sweat, and when she finally began to speak, she'd explained enthusiastically how she was trying to line up another embed with a U.S. Army unit, this one an armored cavalry battalion from Fort Hood, Texas instead of talking about what she knew Booth really wanted to discuss—them, the future, and how to handle things between the two of them if they were going to have any type of a future. But, in the end, her final words to him had been: _'You're very special to me, Seeley. I think __we're_ _pretty special, but this is the best I can do right now. So, you're gonna have to tell me... is that good enough or not?' _And, in the end, Booth grimaced, he thought back of how he'd agreed with everything she'd said.

"Yeah," he said, remembering her words that night. "I can't deny the fact that I _did _say that what we had was special," he admitted with another quick glance in Brennan's direction. "But, don't forget what you also said—how did you put it exactly?—that there was no way to know what the future would hold for us, and that we should play it by ear and keep in touch. You said that, at least for the time being, it was the best way to handle things because it was the best you could do at the time. Right?" Booth asked. "Remember that?"

"But—" Hannah immediately protested.

"No 'buts' Hannah," he snapped. "That was the deal, right? The deal was that there was no deal. Right? That's what you wanted—"

"And, you said you were okay with that—"

"But, we both agreed that we'd each be free to see other people," Booth insisted. "There was nothing firm, no formal agreement, besides saying we'd wait and see." He paused and then said, a bit of resentment creeping into his voice, "But, of course, at that point, since my sorry ass had another five months left in Afghanistan, what that _really _meant was that _you_ would be free to see other people when you bounced to your next embedded assignment, and I'd be free to serve out the rest of my miserable deployment alone—particularly, since most of the women that I'd be seeing were either eighteen year-old E-2 clerk-typists in the rear with the gear or standing on the side of the road with five kids wearing a burqa."

Hannah stared at him with a frown and shifted her jaw nervously from side to side with a heavy sigh. "Seeley," she said pleadingly. "First off, I resent the fact that you're implying I'm some AP welcome wagon that just fucks any enlisted asshole who saves my life."

Booth shrugged. "Not so nice a feeling, is it?"

"Second," Hannah said, ignoring his comment, "I came back to be with you. I put in a request to transfer from the Middle East desk to the Washington bureau to be near _you._"

Booth swallowed and shook his head. "Well, you shouldn't have done that," he said grimly. "You shouldn't have done that without reaching out to me first."

"I did!" Hannah protested. "I've been trying to get in touch with you for two weeks! I only found out four days ago that you'd been red-eyed back stateside and ETS'd out at Fort McNair. Why didn't you return any of my messages?"

"Because I haven't gotten any of them, Hannah," Booth replied.

"Oh, yeah," Hannah sneered. "Like I believe that."

Booth considered explaining that the satellite phone he had been issued in Afghanistan was no longer assigned to him, and wondered who, in fact, had picked up her messages, but then decided no good would come of mentioning it. "You shouldn't have come without getting in touch with me first," he told her.

"So, sue me for wanting to surprise you," she said angrily. Then her face blanched. "Wait. Wait a minute. Wait just a damn minute. You were going to tell me that you'd found someone else over the phone, weren't you, Seeley?"

Booth took a deep breath and leaned his arm against Brennan's car. "We left things totally open, Hannah. Totally casual," he said. "There was no deal, no commitment, no promises—that was the deal, Hannah. And, not because that's how I wanted it, it was because that's how _you _wanted it. We did things _your _way, and did things just like _you _wanted to do it." He paused, staring into her blue eyes before glancing once more at his partner.

"What?" Hannah began tensely. "I can't change my mind?"

"No," Booth said. He gestured vaguely in Brennan's direction. "Not about us...not about this."

"Why the hell not? Why—" Hannah blinked, her eyes suddenly hard as she realized that what she had hoped to achieve with her sudden appearance in D.C. was the last thing that was actually happening. "What...what are you saying, Seeley?"

"I'm saying it—it wasn't a good idea for you to come here, Hannah," he said evenly. "It—you... _you_ don't belong here."

"But, I... I'm ready to offer you more, just like you said you wanted. I'm ready now. I-I... I came here to tell you that we can do things your way, now, because I realized how much I missed you. And, I still want you, Seeley. Very much. I want you, and I want to be with you," she insisted. "I changed my mind. I-I... I want to give us a shot, so I came here to be with you."

"I'm sorry," he said, feeling a small pang of regret at hearing Hannah say the words he'd have been over the moon to hear just two weeks earlier. "I'm sorry," he repeated. "But, that's not...it's too late. I-I can't. We can't. I'm—I'm with someone now. But, even if I weren't—even if nothing else had happened, it wouldn't work, Hannah. You and me—out here, in the real world? It just wouldn't—"

She looked away, avoiding Brennan's intense gaze. "So, what am I supposed to do now?" she whispered as she looked back at Booth.

Booth bit his lip. _I don't know, but it's not my problem, Hannah. This—this one is all on you. I've got enough shit to deal with here, cleaning up this whole Goddamn mess. Because, what a mess this is, _he thought. _What a fucking mess_. He shook his head and shrugged. "I don't know, Hannah," he said. "I didn't ask you to come, so I don't know how to help you fix this." He paused and then looked at Brennan as he said, "I've got enough things on my own plate to deal with, so—I'm sorry." His eyes met Brennan's and raised his eyebrows. She narrowed her eyes at his gaze, but remained silent. Booth closed his eyes briefly then opened them again, quickly glancing at Hannah. "This is one fix, Hannah, that I can't get you out of. You've gotta own this one yourself... all by yourself."

"So, that's it?" Hannah asked.

Booth placed one hand on the small of Brennan's back and clenched his other fist, cracking his knuckles loudly. _Jesus, _he thought. _God, please let this be over. Please._

"Yes," he said. "That's it."

Hannah turned to stare at Brennan and blinked a couple of times as she considered her words. "Well," she said. "I guess today is your lucky day and not mine." She stopped looked down, and then muttered, "I guess you when they say you never get a second chance, they're obviously wrong."

Her head tilting up to look at Booth, Hannah asked, "Are you sure about this, Seeley? Because, once I'm gone, I'm gone. I'm not the type of person who goes where I'm not wanted. I won't have to be told twice."

"I'm positive," Booth replied simply. He took a step towards Brennan and stroked the smooth curve at the base of her spine with the flat of his fist. She tensed at the movement, but remained quiet as he added, "More than positive."

"Really?" Hannah inquired with a small shake of her head. "I just can't...wow." She stopped and then looked intensely at Brennan as she said simply, "Wow, you must really be something special." Then turning her head back to Booth she added, "I just don't get it. After...after _everything _that you said she did to you? After everything you said she did to hurt you—hurt you _that _badly, Seeley?"

Booth felt his stomach begin to knot again, and he could feel the tension growing in Brennan's frame. As she continued to remain silent, not saying so much as a single word of affirmation or inquiry, Booth began to feel afraid, particularly after everything that had come out between he and Brennan two weeks before on the night of their return to D.C.

_"It's my fault," Brennan interrupted him suddenly. "I understand that, Booth. My actions beginning the night when I hurt you in front of the Hoover Building, and in the period that continued until you met me at the airport before I departed for Maluku, everything that happened in between those two points in time happened because I hurt you. I couldn't—I wasn't ready to give you the answer I needed to give you, and so I brought this upon myself. If you had never felt any of those emotions, never had any of those responses while you were deployed, you never would've acquiesced to Hannah's overtures. So, I understand and accept responsibility for the consequences of my actions."_

Knowing that Brennan would know he was lying if he tried to deny what he had told Hannah in Afghanistan, Booth was uncertain what to say that wouldn't hurt her any more than his ex already had. Finally, he managed a non-committal shrug.

Hannah stared at him for a minute, and then her eyes darted back to Brennan. She nodded once and then said, "Like I said, I know when it's best to cut my losses because I've overstayed my welcome. I don't need to be told more than once. So, I'll go—"

Booth breathed a small sigh of relief that immediately caught in his throat when Hannah continued.

"But, before I do go, there's just one last thing I need to say—"

Opening his mouth to speak, Booth was surprised when Hannah waved him off.

"Not to you, Seeley," Hannah said. "To her."

"Just so you know—" Hannah began, turning again towards Brennan. "He never did tell me the specifics when we were together, so I don't really know exactly what happened between you two. I asked, but he wouldn't tell me. He bitched about you, he complained. Hell, one night he even called me by your name when we were in bed together... or, at least, your nickname." She stopped and her eyes looked over at Booth before she continued with a wry smile. "It never dawned on me that he had a nickname for you, his partner, you know? When he talked about you in the sense of work, it was always 'Dr. Brennan-this' or 'Dr. Brennan-that', but never 'Bones'. He never called you that to me except that one time, which why I probably never put two and two together. But, I should've, right? I should've known he wasn't really mine when he was shouted your name when he was coming."

Hannah paused, shaking her head once before she looked up and continued. For her part, Brennan narrowed her eyes as Hannah spoke, but had remained silent, making Booth's concern even more intense.

"Anyway," Hannah continued. "I just think you should know—Seeley's a great guy. And, whatever you did to him...whatever happened between you two? It almost destroyed him—it almost killed him." She stopped, her eyes darting off in the distance as she seemed to embrace some memory as it replayed in her head. After a few seconds, she continued, "He didn't deserve what you did to him. Because, you...whatever you did, it broke him. I'm not sure if you understand that, or, hell, if you're even capable of understanding that from the type of person Seeley told me you are—but, the damage you did? It was...extensive." She stopped again, and again she shook her head as she seemed almost to mutter to herself, "Why he would want to risk that type of heartache, I don't know, but just be clear on one thing, Dr. Brennan. The first time you did whatever it was that you did, it almost destroyed him. If you do it a second time—well, I have no doubt...if you do it again, you _will _finish him off. So, just think twice before you make any decisions that have long term ramifications for people other than yourself, okay?"

Looking to Booth, Hannah nodded once. "See you around, Seeley. Take care of yourself." She then turned on her heel and walked away.

As Booth watched her go, he said quietly, so quietly that he doubted if she could even hear him, his voice gray and empty of any discernible emotion, "Goodbye, Hannah."

The partners watched her as she climbed into her rented Ford Escape and drove off, its tires crunching noisily over the gravel in a slight puff of dust as she pulled away. The pair continued to watch for a minute in silence as Hannah's tail lights faded into tiny red dots in the distance before completely disappearing altogether.

When they were alone, Booth finally took a step away from Brennan and nodded at her. He could see her face was still chiseled in a frozen, non-descript expression, and for once, Booth was surprised to find that he couldn't read her. He didn't know what the expression was concealing beneath Brennan's surface—guilt and sadness, hurt and anger, or something else entirely. However, realizing that letting Brennan simmer in her own juices was the last thing that would be of benefit to either of them, Booth lifted his hand to her cheek and gently caressed it. "I'm sorry, Bones," he said quietly. "So, so sorry."

For her part, Brennan's eyes darted to glance at where his hand stroked her sweaty cheek, but she remained firm and unmoved in all other aspects. Her lack of a response worried Booth, and he didn't know what else to do to elicit _some _type of response from her. _Any _type of response from her was better than no response.

"Bones," he said quietly. "Talk to me. What's going on in that beautiful head of yours?"

Again, Brennan only allowed her eyes to show any hint of her emotional response. They blazed in that moment, and again, Booth was frustrated when he couldn't pinpoint the exact nature of whatever emotions she was feeling. Yes, he knew from the flash he saw in her eyes that the emotions were strong, but he still couldn't tell what they were. At a loss, particularly since Brennan still wasn't talking, Booth lifted his hands to cup the sides of her sweaty face and pulled her lips to his. His mouth opened, and his lips grasped for hers in breathless urgency, wanting so much to moan in desperation at feeling his lips on hers. But, once again, she remained passive and unresponsive. After a few seconds, when Booth had failed to coax her into any reciprocity, he pulled away, feeling a stab of fear take up residence in the put of his stomach once again.

Dropping his hands to his side, Booth took a step back and eyed her. "Bones?" he asked, hoping that she'd say something, anything.

_God, Bones, _he pleaded silently. _Please talk to me. Say something. Say anything. Don't shut down on me_—

Taking several deep, cleansing breaths, Brennan finally snapped her head up and leveled an intense gaze at him and said the first words that she uttered since before Hannah had left. "I can't do this here—not…not in public, with an audience, where the whole metaphorical world can listen."

Booth felt an eerie sense of _deja vu _roll over him, wondering if it was just pure coincidence or intent on Brennan's part that had resulted in her using almost _exactly _the same words that he had said to her on that night when they both made such gut wrenching and crucial confessions to one another. _What can't you do here, Bones? _Booth wondered. _What are you thinking about doing_—_?_

Knowing that now was not the time to push her, Booth merely nodded in agreement with her request. "Okay."

* * *

><p>-TBC-<p>

* * *

><p><span>AN2: Okay, so there you have it. Hannah is gone, Booth is in deep trouble, and Brennan isn't saying a word. What happens next? How do we go from angsty confessions to hot smut and fluff? Yes, believe it or not—it can be done, because we've already written it. Part 3 is in the can, and the sooner you want to see Part 4—well, you can make that happen. Click that 'review' button below—lurkers, regular reviewers, first-time readers—click it, and let us know what you think. We're eagerly awaiting to hear from you. Until then—


	4. Pt IV: When He Explained

When She Ran Away

By: Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

Rated: M

Disclaimer: We own nothing... Obviously. We're still just playing in someone else's sandbox for a bit. Ummm... yeah.~

Summary: Brennan returns from Maluku, meets Booth at the coffee cart, and refuses to hear about Hannah because she has a confession of her own to make. Brennan runs, Booth follows, and angsty physicality ensues. Set at the start of 6x01. AU.

A/N: Since it's become clear in recent days that a lot of people don't read these author notes, we're going to keep this short, sweet, and to the point. To those who left reviews, you're awesome. To those who haven't, what are you waiting for?

Normal disclaimers, exclusions, and provisos apply: as ever, if this type of fic isn't for you, that's fine with us. We understand. Happy fic hunting. Useless comments and flames are summarily ignored, but constructive criticism/feedback is cherished. As a final thought, this piece is angsty, uses adult language, and contains some very suggestive imagery. If that's not your thing, turn back now. You've been warned. As for everyone else, this part is a bit angsty, but, we promise, there is a very pleasing reward at the end of the tunnel if you can make it through the gauntlet. Even still, proceed at your own risk.~

* * *

><p>Part IV: When He Explained<p>

* * *

><p>For a few seconds, Booth looked at Brennan as if he had just watched his entire world begin to implode. He would've liked to have said that he saw the same feelings mirrored in Brennan's face, but he couldn't, because Booth wasn't sure what he was actually see going on there at all. Like a stranger, he found that he couldn't read what she was feeling, tell what she was thinking, or, most importantly, couldn't figure out any indication of what she might want to do next, besides the fact that whatever it was, she didn't want to do it in public. When he had nodded his agreement with her request—as if there was any indication that he'd ever deny her <em>anything <em>after what had just happened to the pair—something again flashed in Brennan's eyes. However, it was gone very quickly as she took her keys, squeezed them once in her fist, and then juggled them once. She had nodded grimly at Booth once before she moved and trudged to the driver's side of her car. Opening the door, she got inside and waited for Booth to climb into the passenger's side of the car before she turned on the ignition. Once he was settled, she refused to look at him, concentrating instead on the road ahead of them as she put the car into gear and drove.

In some ways, the car ride again strangely echoed the course of events that had taken place two weeks ago but for some slight differences. This time, the car ride to Brennan's apartment was not made in a cab driven by a silent cabbie with a penchant for mocking D.C. alternative rock stations at night. No, this time the car ride was made in silence during the day as she drove. The only sounds in the car were the hum of the engine, each person's slightly ragged breathing, and the occasional car signal blinking when Brennan made a turn. As he watched her drive, and Brennan refused to look at him, the only thing that he could tell betrayed the intense emotions she was dealing with was the fact that she was gripping the steering wheel so hard that her fingers had turned white for most of the car ride back to her place. For his part, Booth wondered how much the state of uncertainty he felt alone in being confined to was reminiscent of what he imagined hanging on the edge of oblivion by his bare fingertips felt like. Pushing the self-indulgent thoughts away, Booth spent the remaining minutes of the trip trying to prepare himself for whatever Brennan had to say to him since, unlike the last trip, this time it was she who would begin the conversation.

After a few minutes, they were suddenly there. Brennan quickly got out of the vehicle, and Booth stared at her empty side of the car for a few seconds. The strength with which she had slammed the car door echoed once she got out, and Booth felt a pain twisting in his gut at what awaited them upstairs. He took a minute to steel himself with a few deep breaths before he moved to get out of the car himself as he mentally whispered a plea to her.

_God, Bones, _he prayed silently. _Please give me a chance to explain. Please let me try to fix this, don't_—_don't just shut down on me. Don't give up on us. Not now, not after everything that's happened. Please...let me try to make it right._

And, so, with a final sigh, Booth grabbed the passenger's side handle and moved to get out. Brennan was waiting for him, staring intently at him, but she still hadn't said a word once he got out of the car. She merely clicked the locking mechanism on her keyless entry and the car beeped twice in that annoying sing-sing chirp it had once she did so. Turning on her heels, she walked toward's the buildings front door. Once again, just like the first night, Booth followed Brennan up to her apartment. Again, they climbed the stairs, Booth falling in only a few steps behind her. However, this time when she unlocked the door, entered, flipped on the lights, locked the door behind them, and dropped her keys and iPod on the table—this time it was Brennan who had things to say to Booth and not vice versa as it had been that world-changing/existence-altering night two weeks prior.

Forcing herself to take a deep breath, Brennan narrowed her eyes, focusing on Booth, a glint of her emotions finally cracking through the facade of her calm and cool detachment. He tensed as he anticipated her words, almost as if he were waiting to be struck with a physical blow. However, after a minute more, when Brennan finally began to speak, her first words actually brought Booth relief and hope, not pain and despair as he'd originally anticipated.

"I didn't run," she managed finally, each word causing her to grimace, as if merely speaking them caused her physical pain. "You said—you said that, as of two weeks ago, that we were done running. So, because of that, because of the agreement we made, I didn't run, Booth. I'm here, right now, to try and figure out a way to, as you put it—'handle this.'" She paused, crossing her arms in what was very clearly a defensive gesture as she said, "So, I'm here, Booth. I'm here, and I didn't run, even though this is really the last place I want to be right now, and there's nothing I'd rather being doing then running as fast and as far away as possible right now."

"I know, Bones," Booth said, exhaling audibly as he tried to calm the butterflies in his stomach. _She's not going to run, _he told himself. _ God, thank you. If she was going to run, she would have done so already. She said so. Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. _"And, I'm glad," he added. "That's a good thing...you not running, I mean."

"But, I still want to—" Brennan repeated, her voice quite fragile in that moment as she looked away and said, "I really...I really don't want to be here...with you, right now."

"Bones," he said softly, knowing—or at least, hoping—that her words were said out of pain and not out of true preference. "You don't mean that."

"Yes, I do," Brennan said. "I do, Booth. Because...God, this is _so _fucked up—all of it. This, just—it's a mess, Booth. A complete and total disaster. This..."

Her voice trailed off, and for once, Booth was at a loss as to how to respond. Several long moments of silence passed between them before Brennan finally looked up at him again.

"Why didn't you tell me, Booth?" she asked, her voice tight with hurt. "Why didn't you tell me...about all that happened between you and Hannah? That you had told her that you thought what you two had was 'something special'—whatever that means?" She sighed. "Why didn't you tell me the way she felt about you...and the way that you really felt about her?"

"Bones," he said lamely. "I did...or, at least I thought I did."

"You left out a _lot _of specifics, Booth," Brennan said.

"I figured...I figured if you wanted to know something specific that you'd ask me," Booth began to explain. "I figured, these past couple of weeks, after that first night, that—well, that we were more important in the here and now, than dwelling on the past, Bones. So, when you didn't ask, I was more than happy to just let sleeping dogs lie, and so I didn't tell you because you didn't ask." He averted his glance, knowing in that moment how insultingly empty his response truly was. "I thought, since you didn't ask, that maybe...you didn't want to know."

"That's no excuse, Booth," Brennan said, biting each word as it left her mouth. "At least, not a very good one. I didn't ask because I didn't know there was more I needed to ask about, Booth. A deliberate lie of omission is still a lie nonetheless." Her pale eyes drilled into him, and his resolve crumpled beneath her pained gaze.

"Bones," he pleaded.

"No, Booth," she snapped. "You lied...Hannah...when you were with her, there was more to it than you let on, wasn't there? She wasn't just 'nice' or just a 'good person,' was she? She was more than that, but you said—you said that Hannah, the time you spent with her was just casual. But, it was more than that. It was much more serious than just a casual sexual relationship, wasn't it, Booth?" She shook her head, her throat tightening with emotion as she began to fell tears prick at the edges of her eyes. "God," Brennan moaned. "I trusted you. I trusted you, and you—Hannah...and you, Booth. It was...what she said—"

She paused, and he looked down at the floor, unable to meet Brennan's gaze or, in that moment, to offer some type of further explanation.

"God, Booth," Brennan began. "If you didn't tell me everything about Hannah, then—God, there's more, isn't there? She was right when she said that I hurt you like I did, wasn't she?" She brought a hand to her head and yanked loose the elastic holding her ponytail. She already felt the tell-tale signs of a tension headache encroaching, and the elastic wasn't helping things. It fell to the floor silently, and Brennan quickly tucked her hair behind her ears before she shook her head and said, "You downplayed things with Hannah, but even worse—you downplayed what I did to you, didn't you, Booth?"

"It wasn't that big a deal," Booth said quickly, wincing vaguely as he heard the disingenuoussness in his own voice. "It...it happened, Bones. But, I dealt with it—"

"With Hannah's help," Brennan added sadly.

Booth hesitated, then he nodded slowly.

"God," Brennan said, shaking her head and sniffling slightly. "What did I do, Booth?"

"It doesn't matter—"

"Yes, yes it does," Brennan snapped. "I need to know. What did I do?"

"Bones," Booth began. "See, this is why I didn't want to make a big deal out of it." _Even though it was a big friggin' deal_, he frowned. _Big enough that I couldn't stand being in D.C. after you said you were leaving for Maluku. You were leaving me so I had to leave you, too. And, I hated you for that. I hated you for leaving me and making me leave you, leave us._ "I didn't want you to feel worse than you already do. Don't try and own what happened last year. It's...it wasn't all you—not at all. I made mistakes, too, Bones, that night at the Hoover, and after that, before we both left. But I didn't—I still don't want to break it down and try to assign blame. There's no point, really. It's in the past, and what's done is done. I dealt with it—"

"Tell me what I did to you!" Brennan snapped, her voice crackling in the air. "Or, is there no point to repeating what's already been said because things were as bad as Hannah described them?"

Again, Booth looked away and his lack of a verbal response shredded Brennan in that moment.

"Oh, God," Brennan moaned. She was silent for a minute and then said softly, "Well, there you have it, Booth," Brennan nodded, biting her lip, as the tears now began to run out of the corner of her eyes as they overflowed her tear ducts despite her firm resolve _not _to cry. "There it is."

His head snapped up at her words, and, at last, Booth managed to speak. "What, Bones?"

"The truth," Brennan muttered. "There it is, finally, in all its ugly glory. I hurt you...no, what did Hannah say? I almost destroyed you, and to top it all off—you...you're only with me because Hannah turned you down. So that makes me...what, Booth? What am I? Am I some type of goddamn consolation prize?"

"No," he said emphatically, holding up his hands and taking a step towards her. "Never, Bones. No. I love you. You never could be a—"

"I don't see why not," Brennan answered, quickly wiping away the tears with the back of her hand. "Because, you said it yourself, Booth. You pressed her for more than she was willing to give you at that point, but if you'd had your choice, you would've formed a serious long-term monogamous relationship with Hannah at that moment in time." Brennan stopped and then inclined her head as she asked, "And, then what, Booth? Then what would've happened if you'd been in a committed relationship with Hannah when we came back and we met that night on the Mall? What would you have done if I had still told you what I did that night? Would you still have followed me, or would you have let me run away?"

She paused and then asked, in a voice so small, Booth almost had trouble hearing it. "Did...did you ever tell her that you loved her?"

Her words cut Booth as precisely as if she actually had taken a scalpel and pierced his heart. He had involuntarily taken a short breath at her words, and at that moment, he was at a loss of how to begin to explain as he had begged her to give him the opportunity to do.

Booth blinked as her words echoed in his ears: _Did you ever tell her that you loved her? _His heart pounded in his chest and a wave of nausea washed over him. _Wait. Did I? _he asked himself, trying to remember all the words that passed between him and Hannah all those nights they lay together in her bed. _No, _he reminded himself. _ No. I never told her I loved her because—well, because I never really did._

After several long moments of silence, Booth lifted his head to speak. "I never said those exact words, no."

"But, it was more than just sex with her, wasn't it, Booth? It was more than just being with someone who was there and wasn't me and who wanted you sexually, wasn't it?" Brennan asked.

He sighed and then said, "Look, Bones—Hannah said a lot of things that...well...that weren't entirely accurate."

"Don't do that," Brennan suddenly said. "Don't try to protect me. I need to know. Don't—please don't try to downplay what happened, Booth."

Looking up at her, he nodded. "Fine."

"Everything she said," Brennan began. "Everything she said was pretty damn accurate, wasn't it, Booth?"

"Well," he said, hedging. "Not..." He dropped his head, his face drawn in an expression of defeat, then looked up, peering at her from beneath his heavy brow. "Bones, look—I'm sorry that you had to hear that. But, you've gotta understand that she said a lot of things back there that...that weren't 100% true. I mean, some of them were—"

"Like you fucking her in public under a fig tree less than twelve hours after you first met her?" Brennan suddenly snapped, surprised herself at how much bitterness was in her voice.

Booth flinched as if he had been physically struck by her words.

"I can't deny that part, Bones," he admitted, pressing his lower lip out with his tongue as he struggled to explain himself. "That part—well, it did happen...pretty much as she said it did," he told Brennan slowly. He paused and then shook his head. "God, Bones. I'm so sorry. I never imagined you'd have to hear about that stuff, let alone in the way you did—"

Her eyes flashed for a moment before Brennan responded. "I'm not embarrassed about hearing about your sexual trysts with Hannah, Booth," Brennan snapped, "if that's what you fear has caused me such emotional turmoil." She then looked away and muttered, "Even though I'd prefer to avoid hearing any other details, lest it stoke my aggressive, possessive jealous tendencies." Brennan stopped and then looked back at Booth. "However, that aside, I-I...it seems that she was more than just someone who helped you when you were in a bad place...and, did you really say those things about me?" Brennan's voice had suddenly gone quite small again.

Again, Booth winced, but knew he owed Brennan the truth, and so spoke it, even though he knew it would be very painful for them both to hear. "I was hurt, Bones. I was hurt, humiliated, and...and I loved you—even then, even after the night at the Hoover and you leaving for Maluku. You know—I still loved you. But, I was hurt, and I wanted to lash out at you, and I couldn't because...you were so far away. Thousands and thousands of miles separated us, and I couldn't hurt you even if I wanted to. So yeah, I was angry. And, in that anger, I said some things to Hannah that I regret saying now."

He ran his hand through his hair. "God, I regret them now, Bones. If you only knew..."

Brennan glanced at him, her heart again cracking in places that she thought the past two weeks had slowly started to glue back together. Still, she remained silent as she let Booth continue on uninterrupted.

He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Look," he said. "It wasn't right that I wanted to hurt you, or that I said those hurtful things about you when you weren't there to defend yourself. I was an asshole, Bones. But, at that moment in time, I was hurt, and I wasn't thinking about anything beyond making some of the pain go away."

_I don't blame you, _Brennan thought to herself. _I...I hurt you, and I don't blame you. I can only blame myself in this, and I do, Booth. I do. But, hearing it, hearing the truth of it, from her... it still hurts, Booth. It cuts_—

Booth rubbed his forehead. "I-I...I wasn't thinking about anything except trying to make myself feel better. I know that's selfish and shallow and a shitty thing to say, but it's the truth. And, I'm sorry, Bones, so fucking sorry. I wish I had a better explanation than that, but—but that's the only one I have to offer that's true. And, I owe you at least that—the truth."

Brennan considered his words before she replied quietly, "What you said before, about me not hurting you—you were wrong. It happened once before; it'll happen again."

"No," he said. Sighing, Booth felt a wave of fear cresting inside of him again as he said, "So, what—is this your way of saying that you don't want to be with me, Bones?"

A beat of silence passed between them and still Brennan didn't answer. When she remained silent, Booth pressed her quietly, "It isn't...is it?"

Looking up at him, her tear-streaked face miserable in its pain, slowly Brennan shook her head. "I don't know how I could do that even if I wanted to, Booth. I just don't...not without causing a great amount of harm both to myself and, by extension, to those people who are our friends and work with us."

"Oh, God," Booth breathed, exhaling another sigh of relief. "Thank God."

"But," Brennan said, looking up and slowly shaking her head. "I don't even know how or where to start. I'm very worried, Booth, and scared—I'm so scared right now, I can't even communicate it to you. I...I don't know how to 'fix this' thing between us because it seems as if the issues with which we've been confronted today greatly surpass the scope of our normal 'bickering.'"

"I know that, Bones," Booth agreed solemnly. "I know that."

"Where do we start?" Brennan asked him. "I don't know how or where to start, Booth. How...how do we fix this?"

"Do you want to fix it?" Booth asked—although he was fairly certain he knew the answer since Brennan was still there with him and hadn't kicked him out of her apartment—but part of him still needed to hear it from her just to be certain. "Do you?"

Looking up at him, a pair of tears silently rolled down her cheeks in parallel as she nodded. "Yes."

"Then, we will," Booth said, reaching out to her. He took a step towards her, and his heart lightened just a bit when she didn't tense or flinch or move away. Raising his hand to her cheek, Booth quickly brushed away the tears with the back of his hand. "Starting right now, we will."

"How?"

"Tell me what you need from me," Booth said slowly. "Tell me how I can make it better."

"I need..." Brennan began slowly. "I need you to help me understand, Booth." His heart again melted as he saw her falling back on her tried and true logic, her attempts to fight her battles with the tools of reason and intellect. In that moment, if it were even possible, he loved her a bit more for just being so purely and truly herself.

_That's so you, _Booth thought, not for the first, thousandth, or last time. _And, God, I love you for it. I love you._

"I need you to help me to understand why things happened, Booth," she began. And, then slowly, she added, "And, I need to know why...as much as it hurts me to say this, the evidence of your behavior indicates that you've established a certain pattern in your interactions with me and then with...Hannah." She stopped, looked up at him and said, "I need to know why, logically—why I should believe that the things you said and felt for Hannah are any different than what you've said to me. The things you've said about us—how...how can I know that you'll follow through on those promises when something or someone who's better just doesn't come along and replace me?" Brennan breathed. "How can I know that I can trust what you've told me won't end up resulting in something that will destroy us both in the end, Booth?" She stopped, and then slowly shook her head. "I wasn't lying when I said I want to fix this, but logically, I have to ask—how can we know that what we're doing isn't just going to bring us each more pain than happiness in the long run? How do we know?"

"Because," Booth immediately said. "You're so different from Hannah, Bones, and the way I feel about you is different. The difference between what I had with Hannah—whatever it was—and what we have, it's like the difference between night and day, Bones."

"Why?" Brennan asked. "Like I said, you asked Hannah to take a chance on a relationship with you and then she turned you down. It's the same thing that happened to us—"

"Wait," Booth said. "Hang on a sec there, Bones." He took a breath, closed his eyes and sighed. "Look," he said, "I didn't really push Hannah for any kind of a relationship. I basically...well, she led and I followed. I was in a bad place, Bones. I know I've said that before, but if my life had been different at the moment in time when I met her, things probably never would've gotten as far as they did between us—between me and Hannah. I was sad, and lonely, and weak. And, I can't lie—I did want to try to see if there was a way to make things more permanent between us. But, it...it happened so fast. One day I'm hunkered down on my observation point and this perky blonde starts trotting into a hot zone, and then next thing I know she and I are getting hot and heavy under a fig tree—"

He stopped when he heard Brennan take a swift breath. Looking up at her, he said, "I'm sorry. I...I don't want to say more than I need to, but if you want the truth, than that's it. What happened between me and Hannah, Bones, it was so hard and so fast—six weeks, you know? Two months before I came home, I met her...and we were together for six weeks. That was it. And, then, all of a sudden, I...it's just that—look, when she told me that she was leaving, I was afraid I'd be left alone again. And, I didn't want to be alone, not having been with someone, someone who finally wanted me and then losing her again. It was hard enough when I hadn't heard from my best friend, the person who was made me feel whole, in months. I wasn't sure when I'd see Hannah again, but I wanted to at least have someone to talk to, email, hear from every so often. You gotta remember, Bones, when she left, I thought I still was going to be in the desert for another five months. I needed something—someone—to get me through it. I needed to be able to think about someone, dream about someone, long for someone who the simple thought of didn't bring me extreme happiness in one heartbeat and unbearable pain in the next."

"And, afterward?" Brennan finally asked. "What about afterward, Booth? Where was she going to fit in to your life after the five months were up?"

"I didn't want to come back from the 'Stan and find myself alone," Booth answered truthfully. "It's hard enough coming back from a war and jumping back into normal civilian life—I know, because I've done it before—and I didn't want to come back alone, to an empty life, with nothing to look forward to, especially when I didn't know how things were going to stand between us, Bones. I...I needed to know I had someone to fall back on in case there wasn't going to be anything else between us after a year—because you gotta understand, when I didn't hear from you, I thought that maybe you'd even changed your mind about wanting to continue the partnership when we got back." He paused and then looked away as he slowly shook his head. "I can't lie and say there's not some part of me that wasn't even thinking that maybe on that day when we were supposed to meet at the coffee cart that you wouldn't show, Bones. I know that's not fair, and it's a shitty thing for me to have thought, to doubt you like that. But, I couldn't help it. Part of me thought that maybe you were going to stay in Maluku, away from D.C., away from our work, away from me—and never come back. Or, best case scenario, maybe if you did come back from Maluku and stayed at the Jeffersonian you wouldn't want to work with me anymore. I know it's not logical, but it's how I felt, and I was scared shitless about having to deal with all that all on my own."

"I can understand that, Booth," Brennan said slowly. "But, you still haven't answered my question."

"I know," Booth told her. "But ,I'm trying here, Bones. I'm _really _trying."

"And, I understand that, too, Booth," Brennan said. "However, I need to know—I need...I need a direct answer to my question, Booth," Brennan said with a faint bitterness in her soft voice. "What would you have done, had you and Hannah been in a committed, monogamous relationship when you came back, and I told you that night by the coffee cart that I loved you?" she asked. "What would you have done?" She stopped and then added softly, "Would you have let me run away?"

Booth's eyes seemed to glaze over as he stared into the corner of Brennan's living room. He inhaled a deep breath, his mouth hanging open, and his eyes narrowing as he mulled over the question.

"I don't really know, Bones," he admitted in a serious voice after another moment of silence. "It's a difficult question to answer. I..." His voice trailed off as he gathered his thoughts. "I love you, Bones. I've _always_ loved you—going all the way back to that first case we worked together, really."

He paused, thinking back to that night they first kissed on the back stoop of his old pool bar. _"I just feel like, um, this is going somewhere," he'd said to her. "Why do you feel this is going somewhere?" she asked, leaning closer to him. "I just...I feel like I'm gonna kiss you." _The memory of that deliciously long, grasping kiss, so passionate and knee-meltingly intense, stayed with him for years in his memories and fantasies. As he had watched her drive away in that cab that night, he decided not to shoot pool that night, but instead stumbled back into the rain and walked home, half-hard as he savored the memory of that kiss. Even then, he knew there was something cosmic about the chemistry between them.

_Had I fallen in love with her then? _he wondered. _Nah, perhaps not. _Then, when was it? _By the time we wrapped up that case in eastern Washington State_—_after spending all those evenings in the town bar, nudging away the more annoying local guys who were shamelessly pawing at her just because she was the hottest thing that had come through that tiny-ass town in years? Yeah, I think it was then. Or, at the very least, I was definitely beginning to fall in love with her. _Booth scrolled through their personal docket, case-by-case, but was not able to identify a single moment when he knew he loved her.

"That night behind the Hoover, after we met with Sweets, when I told you that I had to move on...well, I think the truth is that, no matter how hard I might've tried to move on, I was never gonna be able to stop loving you. And, so, in the end, no matter how hard I tried—and believe me, Bones, I tried very, _very _hard, I should've known that me trying to move on was never going to happen. Not really." Booth felt his eyes well up with tears. "I will always love you, Bones, and no matter what happens between us, I don't think I'll ever be able to stop loving you." Booth cleared the thickness from his throat and swallowed. "So, I guess—I can't be certain, but I think if I'd have come back from Afghanistan and been with Hannah—really and truly been with her—and you'd have told me you loved me, I still wouldn't have let you run. I still would've followed you."

"But, why?" Brennan asked, her brow crinkled as she struggled to understand. "I don't understand, Booth." He paused, her throat growing even more thick with emotion. "You have to help me understand _why_."

"Because," Booth sighed. "If I'd let you run, that would be the same thing to me as letting you go, and I—I just couldn't do that, Bones. I've tried, and I can't. I just can't let you go. I guess because I never could've given my whole heart to anyone but you. So, yeah, I still would've followed you." He saw her blink and wondered if she understood. "You know, that's why I could never really move on, Bones. I don't think I could ever love anyone in the way...the way I so completely love you."

"But, you wanted Hannah to be—"

Booth tried to blink away his tears, wondering how he had managed to make such a mess of things.

"Hannah was there when you...when you weren't," he explained. "She—she served a purpose in my life and made me think I'd found something to replace what I'd lost. But, it wasn't real, Bones. She was just...fool's gold. From a distance, it looked pretty and shiny and was distracting enough in its pretty shininess that I thought it was the real deal, but it wasn't. And, so I fooled myself into thinking that I'd lucked out again and hit the jackpot, but it _wasn't real_. I know that _now_, but at the time, at best, I was just fooling myself into thinking she would be able to help me replace what I thought I'd lost—you."

He swallowed hard, certain that no matter what he said, he'd come across sounding like an asshole. _God, when did I turn into this big of a dick? _A cringing voice of self-doubt echoed in Booth's mind. _Fuck_—

"Look, Bones, I pretty much knew all along—even if I didn't want to admit it to myself—that she was...well, that what she and I had was never more than a...temporary thing. Even if we'd have tried to make it something else, something bigger or more permanent—it never would've worked, just like I told her. It would never have lasted. She...she doesn't want to settle down, stay in one place, get married, or have a family. She doesn't want the type of life I have here—even if she thinks she does right now. And, I can't do that. I can't risk wrecking my life again on a destructive relationship like that if for no other reason than because of Parker. I can't risk doing that type of damage again—"

"But, you are," Brennan suddenly interjected. "Don't you see, Booth? By staying with me, that's _exactly _what you're doing?"

"Oh, Bones, no, never," Booth said. "Don't you get it by now? Don't you understand? The damage that happened between us was because we were apart, Bones. It didn't happen because we tried to be together." He stopped and then smiled when he added, "And, well, as for Hannah—you know another reason she and I never would've worked out, right?"

"No, I don't," Brennan answered.

"Well, there's just this one other little thing that makes most of those other really good reasons moot points in the long run," he told her.

"And, what's that, Booth?"

"Well, it's simple, really, Bones," he said, glancing up at her. "It never would've worked with Hannah, even if we'd tried to fool ourselves into making it work for a while, because, well, I could never love her with my whole heart the way I love you."

"How can you know that for certain?" Brennan said quietly, another single tear rolling down her cheek.

Booth reached out and wiped the tear away with the side of his thumb. "You know the saying 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?'"

"Of course," she replied.

He glanced down at his feet then looked up again. "With Hannah and I—the whole would never have been greater than the sum of its parts."

"I don't know what that means, Booth..."

He smiled briefly at her words. Booth hadn't realized how much he missed all of her squinty Brennanisms, especially that one.

"Bones," he said, his voice dropping a half-octave. "You and me—well, how do I say this? You and me, when we're together, we're better than we each are by ourselves. You—being with you makes me a better person, Bones. You make my life fuller, bigger and better. You've opened my eyes to a whole different way of seeing the world. You have for years, going all the way back to the beginning." He smiled sweetly at her as a warm feeling spread through his chest. "That was never true with Hannah. She didn't—she helped me pass the time, I guess, but she didn't make my life richer the way you do. But, you, Bones? When I'm with you, I'm a better man than I've ever been without you."

"Booth..."

"Look, Bones," he said. "I'm not proud of what I did, Bones. If I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, I—" He ran his hand through his thick brown hair and sighed heavily. "If I'd known you...if I knew you loved me, Bones, I'd never have..." He looked away, a hard lump forming in his throat as his eyes began to water again.

"I would do anything, Bones, _anything _to go back in time and undo what I've done," he said, raising his eyes to make her understand how sorry he was. She met his gaze, and Booth saw something shine in them—tenderness? Understanding? Empathy? He didn't know, but whatever he saw gave him hope.

"But I can't, you know. I can't go back to that night behind the Hoover and un-say what I said about moving on, Bones. I just can't. I'm not a wizard who has some magic wand that I can wave—as much as I wish I did because—and I just can't undo everything that happened," Booth told her. " I can't go back and un-reenlist in the Army or un-deploy to Afghanistan. I can't undo what I did with Hannah or un-say the things I said to her. I wish I could. God, I wish I could. But, I can't, Bones. I can't change the past—and neither can you."

He swallowed hard again.

"Bones," he said quietly, his voice broken. "The fact is, the past brought us to where we are today. The good parts, the bad parts. The parts we are proud of, and the parts we regret. Right? All of it. Had it all gone differently—had you not taken off in that cab by yourself that night I fired you, or had we kissed that night you had your big museum event for your Egyptian mummy, or had you gone ahead and used my stuff to have a child—we might not be where we are today. In fact, we probably _wouldn't_ be where we are today."

He took a step towards her and placed his hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry about Hannah," he said. "I'm sorry didn't tell you how serious I thought it was at the time. How serious she thought it was. I'm sorry you had to hear..." Booth shook his head. "You know—that you had to hear all of that today." He sighed again and, letting go of Brennan's shoulder, wiped a damp eye with the back of his hand.

"But, I love you, Bones. I _love _you. And, nothing in the past changes the way I feel about you now." He looked down at his feet, then up again at her tear-streaked face. "I can only hope that nothing in the past changes the way you feel about me," he added solemnly.

Brennan narrowed her eyes and looked at Booth as his words hung in the air.

"From the description of those random events that you've mentioned, Booth, the only commonality I can discern aside from the fact that they were events where you and I interacted on some personal level, it appears that you've linked them as missed opportunities where, had I acted differently, I might've circumvented the entire series of events that resulted in Hannah's arrival in D.C. and her subsequent conversation with us today. In fact, on each occasion, your words would seem to indicate I missed a chance to change the nature of our personal relationship, and ergo, I made another series of mistakes about which you've just now so kindly informed me." Shaking her head, Brennan bit her lip again as she said, a bit of sarcasm coming into her voice, "Thank you for pointing those out, Booth. That was very kind of you, and I appreciate it. It really makes me feel very positive and self-confident about things."

"That's not what I meant, Bones," Booth said quickly, immediately sensing his error, given Brennan's sensitive frame of mind. "That's not...look, Bones, I'm not blaming you at all. Hell, if anything, most of the missed chances we've had over the years were my doing, not yours."

He thought about the years he spent in silence, pining for her, loving her from a distance, building a wall inside of himself to keep his own feelings from spilling over and either contaminating their partnership or, worse, frightening her away. Booth knew he didn't want to live that way any more, not having known the liberating feeling of loving her, freely, openly and completely, the way he had in the two weeks since that night by the coffee cart. _I can't go back to that, to how I was_, he thought. _I can't, and I won't_.

"What I meant was...there's no point dwelling on the past, because good, bad or indifferent, we can't change it. And, since the past brought us to where we are today—you and me, finally together, in one place, feeling the way we do about one another—I'm not sure I want to change it. Sure, there are things in the past I wish I could change or do without entirely, but there's no point to that kind of wishing, Bones. Like my grandmother used to say, 'If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.' We can't change the past, Bones. We can only look back and acknowledge it, accept it, understand it, and, God willing, learn from it. But, we can't change it, no matter how hard we try."

Brennan shook her head. "But, I could've—"

"No," Booth insisted, reaching out and taking her hand in his, squeezing it gently. "Don't think about what you wish you might have done. There's no point. Don't try to fix blame, either. It's a useless exercise, believe me. We can't change the past, and we can't control the future." He thought about that last part for a second, and noted a flicker behind Brennan's pale eyes as her brain seemed to begin churning again. "You know what I mean, Bones. We can influence the future, right? To the extent that we can make good choices today, right? But, even the future comes down to the present, the only moment we can really do anything about. So, let's not dwell on the past, or worry about the future, alright? Let's enjoy the present."

Brennan thought about what his words meant, all of the ideas and meaning wrapped up in them, and tried hard to make sense of them. She was desperately wrestling with what they meant, and, more importantly what he was offering in the context of the explanation.

Smiling, Booth watched in pleasure as he saw Brennan's mental gears turn. He leaned in close to her. "I can see you thinking."

"It's what I do, Booth," Brennan began.

"It's no good, Bones," Booth said. "Wonderful, great, completely awesome to watch, but not right now—not about _this_. Don't...please don't overthink this one, Bones. Don't beat the horse until its dead in your mind. You know what I've said, you understand what it means, and the only thing you need to decide is either you can accept it...or not."

"It's not that easy, Booth," Brennan muttered. "I—"

He cut her off, and smiled with a slight shake of his head. "Your wheels are just spinning, Bones. Let it go."

"I can't let it go, Booth," she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper. "I can't—and I know this is going to sound incredibly ironic coming from me since I know what you're basically advocating is a form of compartmentalization—but, I just can't do it. I have to make certain that I've learned everything I can from it, processed the experience or experiences for the evidence they are, and extrapolated everything I can from them so I can anticipate any future outcomes should I encounter such a scenario again. So..."

Booth tried to conceal his smile. A flash of realization struck him: that night behind the Hoover some ten months earlier, when she told him she couldn't change—she was wrong. She _could _change. She _had _changed. It was just that Temperance Brennan arrived at change at a different speed and sometimes by a different, more circuitous, path than other people did. He looked at her and knew that the woman standing in front of him was a different woman than the one he saw at Dulles the day she left for Maluku.

Brennan paused to take a breath and then tilted her head at him. "So, you have to understand, I have to know what I did wrong, when I did something that was wrong, so I can avoid making those same mistakes in the future. I just can't cut myself off from where I've been or where I'm going to live in some hedonistic idyll...as tempting as that may sound. I just can't."

Shaking his head, his deep voice became more insistent. "Let go of the past," he said. "Set the future aside for the time being. Be mindful of the present. For right now, just—enjoy this moment, and the next one, and the next one. Let go of the past, Bones."

_Enjoy this moment. _

Brennan considered Booth's words. It reminded her of a treatise she had read once written by a Theravadan monk from the Thai Forest tradition that described the principles of mindfulness. It amused her to consider the striking resonance between the words of her adherent Catholic partner and the Buddhist monk whose treatise she read in graduate school. She remembered how the whole treatise argued that the way to attain a state of nirvāna was to let go of troubling, recursive thoughts that allowed one's mind to smolder in negativity and to thereby make one's mind 'like fire unbound.' _Maybe Booth is right_, she thought. _Maybe he's right, and I need to let go. I just don't know how to do that... _ She tried to heed his words and let go of the past, to still the roiling sea of her thoughts, but she couldn't stop thinking how the whole situation failed to make logical sense.

"I don't understand," Brennan said, shaking her head slightly. "The evidence, all the evidence, Booth—" She stopped, her voice trailing off weakly as she tried to make him understand the root of her self-doubt and insecurity. "I don't understand how you can say you were attracted to Hannah and then be attracted to someone like me."

Booth hesitated for a minute, and then said slowly, "I know I'm probably gonna fall on my own sword at some point in this, but I don't know any other way to make you understand, Bones. So, I'm gonna preface what I'm about to say by pointing out that you and Hannah aren't so different as you might think. You're both strong women, gorgeous, and—"

Waving her hand, Brennan shook her head and then said, "Please don't, Booth. I—I didn't want to hear about Hannah the first night you told me of her existence, and now—now that I've actually met the woman, and I'm even more certain that I don't want to know now."

"Then you can't blame me, Bones," Booth said quietly. "You can't blame me for not telling you something if I try and you say you don't want to hear it."

Sighing, Brennan looked up at him and shook her head. "I don't want to hear how comparable Hannah and I are, Booth. Such comparisons make me nauseous—"

"I told you just so you could understand why I could be attracted to someone like you and then to someone like Hannah, Bones," Booth told her gently.

Taking a moment, Brennan looked away as she said, "It still doesn't make any sense to me, Booth. If we merely ascribe any limited similarities that you believe I may share with Hannah as attributing from the fact that we're both alpha females, that still doesn't explain why you seem to be reverting to a certain physical type...and, it's a type that, aesthetically speaking, I just don't come even close to matching in any way, shape, or form."

Booth knew Brennan was nervous as soon as she started rambling. When she began lobbing out anthropological mumbo-jumbo that seemed convoluted even for her, Booth had an inkling as to how uncertain she really was given the fact that it was one of her most well-guarded, but also most easy tells to spot—if one knew her the way he did. Still, although he knew Brennan was troubled by something, it took him a minute to replay her words in his mind before he latched onto it.

'_Certain physical type,' _Booth thought to himself. _Oh, fuck_, he grumbled mentally. _She's not...how can she be worried over something like that?_ He groaned to himself, slightly exasperated by Brennan's idiosyncratic insecurities.

"Bones, lemme ask you something," Booth began. "From an anthropological standpoint, what does science tell you squints is the reason why physical attraction occurs?"

"A male's sexual attraction derives from a desire to mate with a respective female in order to propagate the species," Brennan responded automatically.

"Okay," Booth said with a nod. "Then, setting aside that last bit about propagating the species, I think the one thing that even you've got to admit is that there's been a fair bit of 'evidence' in the last two weeks to prove that I love having sex with you." He paused and then waggled his eyebrows as he said, "I really, _really _love it, Bones."

"I'm an attractive female," Brennan conceded, "who is quite comfortable in her own sexuality and displays confidence in herself—"

"Except when she starts to overthink the issue of why it seems like, but for you, I only seem to be bagging blondes left and right, huh, Bones?" Booth asked, a slight grin tugging at the edge of his lips.

A vague smile appeared on Brennan's lips. "What are you trying to say?" she asked, shifting her weight from one hip to the other as she scanned his face, a glint in her eye.

Booth cocked his head to one side and grinned, then took a step towards her, leaning close to her and backing her against her foyer wall. "What do you think I'm trying to say, Bones?"

"Well," she began. "You might be—" She was abruptly cut off when Booth bent his head and pressed his lips against hers, his tongue skimming her lower lip and patiently coaxing her mouth open.

It was the first time that Booth had touched her in a way that was more than something driven by sorrow or regret or sadness, and it jolted Brennan for a minute as she suddenly recalled that he was capable of making her feel so much more than something that could be described as a negative—or, at least, less than positive emotion.

Brennan moaned into his kiss as she felt him lean into her, pressing her firmly against the wall. "I think—" She paused and struggled to find the words, an incredibly difficult task given how lightheaded she was feeling. "I think you're trying to distract me."

"Uh huh," Booth moaned, leaning into her again, even more closely. "Good answer."

"But I...you can't do that, Booth," she whined lightly. "I can't think like I need to if you keep trying to distract me.

"That's sorta the point, Bones."

"But, I have to—"

"Have to do what, Bones?" Booth breathed into her ear, his breath warm and moist and, apparently, possessing the ability to inflame her beyond the point of caring about anything that had just happened between them. "What pressing business do you need to do right now more that's more important than this?"

And, as she looked up at him, for once, Brennan realized, she didn't really have a very good answer to Booth's question.

* * *

><p>-TBC-<p>

* * *

><p><span>AN2: Okay, yes, yes, we know—evil cliffhanger. We're sorry about that, but it couldn't be helped. So, to summarize, where do we stand now? Booth's explained, Brennan's felt guilty, they've both faced some hard truths as they laid all the cards on the table. However, the question now is... where is the smut and fluff as we promised? Well, the bad news is that it's still coming because Part IV had to be split into two separate parts as it was just too lengthy as a single entry. The good news is that Part V is completed, uploaded, and ready to be shared. Want to see it more quickly? Click that little 'review' button below—lurkers, regular reviewers, first-time readers—click it ASAP, and let us know what you think. We're eagerly awaiting to hear from you (and, we promise, no more angst from this point out... only the good stuff. We promise!) Until then...~


	5. Pt V: When They Finally Found Each Other

When She Ran Away

By: Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

Rated: M

Disclaimer: We own nothing... Obviously. We're still just playing in someone else's sandbox for a bit. Ummm... yeah.~

Summary: Brennan returns from Maluku, meets Booth at the coffee cart, and refuses to hear about Hannah because she has a confession of her own to make. Brennan runs, Booth follows, and angsty physicality ensues. Set at the start of 6x01. AU.

A/N: Many, many thanks to all those who've stuck it out through one of the greatest angsty pieces ever and shared reviews. It's been great, and we very much appreciate it. So, now, without further adieu, here it is... no more delays. As promised, we hope you enjoy the pay off.

Normal disclaimers, exclusions, and provisos apply: as ever, if this type of fic isn't for you, that's fine with us. We understand. Happy fic hunting. Useless comments and flames are summarily ignored, but constructive criticism/feedback is cherished. As a final thought, this piece is angsty, uses adult language, and contains some very suggestive imagery. If that's not your thing, turn back now. You've been warned. As for everyone else, proceed at your own risk.~

* * *

><p>Part V: When They Finally Found Each Other<p>

* * *

><p>If there was one thing that could quickly reduce Dr. Temperance Brennan to a quivering, unthinking, completely emotional, quaking mass of id, it was the warm and intense stare of Seeley J. Booth when his deep brown eyes were inflamed with lust.<p>

Staring into them, Brennan knew she was losing a fighting battle. Her ability to logically explain why it wasn't a good idea to let Booth distract her with his lips and his body and his—

_Oh, God_, she thought. _How can he be that hard already? Shit_—

"Booth, I have to—"

"Yeah, Bones?"

"I need to—"

"Trust me, Bones. I know _exactly _what you need," he whispered into her ear, causing Brennan to shake slightly.

"No, Booth—"

"No?" Booth laughed. "You sure about that, Bones?"

"No, I'm not," Brennan said.

"Then, what's the problem, Bones?" he chuckled. _God, I love you, _he thought, the words echoing in Booth's mind as he delighted in toying with her. "Huh, Bones?"

"I mean," she started to correct herself. "I mean, yes, Booth, I am sure that I need to—"

"Need, what, Bones?" he said as he dipped his head lower and began to gently suck on her pulse point.

Brennan momentarily indulged in the sensation, letting her eyes roll back into her head. "Oh, fuck, Booth—please, just stop that for just one minute."

"Why?" he whispered to her. "Why should I?"

"Because, I have to...I have to find out—"

"Find out what?"

With a mental roar, she shifted slightly so that she pulled her neck away from his lips. Booth sighed as Brennan turned, and having put some distance between them—distance that allowed her to reassert control of herself, when she was so close to giving in—looked at him with a pleading look in her eye.

"What's so special about me?" she finally managed to get out just as Booth had lifted a hand to her cup her breast. "I'm...I'm not, to use a colloquialism, your _type._"

"Bones," he said in a husky voice. "I don't understand how you think sometimes. I mean, are you kidding me?"

"No, Booth," she said, shaking her head slightly in confusion. "I'm actually quite logical," Brennan retorted. "My line of reasoning is simply going by the pattern your previous behavior has established, Booth. To my knowledge, almost all your serious relationships have been with women who have a skewed body mass index ratio, have long blonde hair, and well—not to put too fine a point on it...I think as it was once described to me, don't have 'my curves.' So, if you're attracted to me, you're deviating from the established normative criteria you've used in the past for selecting a partner."

Booth stared at her for a few seconds. He then laughed as he slid his hand down from her breast to the round swell of her hip. "Do you have any idea how crazy you make me?" he asked. She stared at him blankly. "How crazy you've been making me for years now?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"What do I mean?" he retorted, a wide smile breaking across his lips. "What do you mean what do I mean? Jesus, Bones...do you remember that case in Vegas? What was her name—Billie Morgan, right? And that federal prosecutor that got whacked by the mob? Mason Roberts, I think. That dress you wore to the casino, the red one you were wearing when I got back from Nolan's gym when Agent Tsang was there talking to that Latina girl Marisol? Do you remember it was the one with the plunging neckline—_oh!" _Booth had to shake away a shiver just thinking about it."And, the way you did your makeup, with that dark, smoky look around your eyes, and that hot red lipstick—do you have any idea how much self-control it took for me not to drag you off that casino floor and back up to our hotel room right then?" He grunted at the thought of whisking her away and having his way with her in that delicious red dress. "I mean, _damn._ Do you know what you were doing to me, especially after you pulled that move at Nolan's gym the day before when you plucked that cash from between your tits like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat?" Booth shook his head and shivered again. "Good God, woman."

"Really?" Brennan squeaked.

"Really?" Booth repeated, mimicking her. "Yeah, Bones—_really._ Oh, God—and that one Halloween you dressed up as Wonder Woman, with that absolutely fuck-me bustier that made those breasts of yours look even _more_ awesome the way they just about spilled over." He paused, licking his lips as he savored the image. "Oh, and those amazing knee-high red boots?" He grunted and waggled his eyebrows. "Hell, Bones—do you know how many times I've stood there at a crime scene, watching you squat down, your ass looking all kinds of fantastic in that snug little blue jumpsuit of yours? And, do you know how many times I've sat around and fantasized about you in that cute blue lab coat of yours?"

"You've fantasized about me in my lab coat?" she asked incredulously.

"If you only knew," Booth grinned at her, remembering somewhat sheepishly what he had actually been doing so many of those times he had sat around dreaming about her in that blue lab coat.

"Fine," Brennan conceded. "Fine. So, there's several examples that demonstrate that you've long harbored a physical attraction to me. However, I still just don't understand how you can go from a blonde 'leg man' to a brunette 'breast man' just like that, Booth," Brennan snapped her fingers to emphasize her point.

_Leg man? Breast man? _Booth grinned and knew exactly where she had picked up that set of terminology. _Oh, yeah: Angela._

"First off," Booth said. "You've got the best damn pair of legs I have ever seen."

"But, there not my best attribute," Brennan quickly countered. "Even you just said that."

"Even still," he said. "I noticed them the moment I walked into that class of yours at American. I opened that door and walked in, and saw this amazing woman at the front of the class, with great legs that just went on and on and on, in that skirt you were wearing—yellow floral print, wasn't it?" He grinned. He knew exactly what skirt she was wearing that day. That moment, that whole exchange, had been seared into his memory for six years. "So, yeah, I'm a leg man, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the finer attributes of a fuckably delicious body like yours, Bones."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, you've best set of gams I've ever seen, Bones," he said as he pressed his chest up against hers. "Let's just say that maybe I was a leg man, but as soon as I saw you and saw these, these right here, Bones?" Booth rubbed his chest against hers, causing Brennan to groan a bit. "As soon as I saw these, I learned the error of my ways."

He then leaned into her again, pressing his leg between hers and nudging them apart.

"Gams?" she said, nearly gasping at his suggestive movement.

Booth chuckled. "Gams, you know?" Her arched eyebrow made it clear she didn't know. "Bones—haven't you ever watched one of those movies from the 1930s on TCM?" Brennan gave him a blank look. "Jeez, Bones—how can you make it through the silent movies of the 20s and skip all the good stuff from the 30s and 40s?" Brennan opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off with a kiss, not wanting to get sidetracked into another pop culture debate with her. "Okay, whatever. Never mind, Bones. The important point is that your legs are fantastic—all kinds of awesome. And, your tits—despite your claims to the contrary, do have magic powers, Bones. They have magic powers over me."

Brennan glanced down, shrugged and looked up again. "Meaning?"

Booth hedged a little. He was unused to having to give someone as confident as Brennan—who was usually to the point of overconfidence—the equivalent of a pep talk. The oddity of the situation was not lost on him, and he felt more than a bit of awkward discomfort at having to do it. _You're killing me here, Bones. Absolutely killing me. _However, because there was just about nothing he would deny her, Booth gave a small shake of his head and continued.

"Well," he began, then laughed as he anticipated his next confession. "Meaning, I've been appreciating your tits for a long time. A really long time, if I'm going to be completely honest, Bones. I've been staring down your shirts for years—since the very first case."

Brennan gave him a wary look, and Booth knew she still wasn't convinced.

Sighing, he said, "Okay. Fine. Ummm, you know that one Christmas we got locked up in the lab over the holiday weekend because of that lung fungus?"

She cocked her head and shot him a look that seemed to say with a frown: _Of course, I remember that, Booth._

"Right. Of course, you remember that. You never forget anything," Booth said, more to himself than to Brennan.

For her part, she smiled at his words.

"So, anyway, you were sitting there on the platform in that light grey-blue tank top and were doing your squint thing when you were looking through that microscope—"

"And, then you popped up like some deranged elf," Brennan laughed. "You did that little dance of yours, and you were wearing that hat of Angela's—"

"Yeah, well, I was a little high on that crazy anti-fungal shot they gave us," Booth said. "And you gotta admit, I looked pretty cute in that hat."

"I remember," Brennan said, smiling her secret smile. "And, maybe, you did look..._slightly _cute."

"Uh huh," Booth grinned, pressing up against her again. "That's right."

"You know, that was the first time that you ever touched me like that," Brennan said, a wistful tone creeping into her voice.

"Well, I guess I was high enough that when I got this great idea in my head that I decided I could risk it to get close enough to snuggle right up next to you," Booth continued to narrate.

"I loved it when you did that," Brennan admitted. "You were so warm and so...wonderful."

"And, you weren't too shabby yourself, Bones," Booth grinned at her. "That's why I took a chance and and leaned over, real close, and looked right down into that tank top you were wearing to admire those great tits of yours." His toothy grin widened, as he recalled the image. "And, you know, if you'd have called me on it, I'd have just blamed the medicine, but truth is, I totally got off on that kind of close-up visual inspection of your wares because me having developed a keen appreciation for and loving of your breasts goes all the way back to the very beginning, Bones." He smirked. "All the way."

"But, that still doesn't answer the question, Booth," Brennan insisted, not letting go of the issue. "You still haven't given me a straight answer."

"Wait, what?" Booth's jaw tensed slightly. "What is it you want to know exactly, Bones?" he asked, hoping to stall for more time.

"I want to know how you can suddenly go from getting being attracted to all those blondes over the years to...well, be attracted to someone who isn't," Brennan told him.

Booth stared at her for a minute, and then, in one of his more inspired moments, he finally figured out a way to end the pep talk with a practical demonstration of his admiration of Brennan's killer body.

"Nuh-uh," he replied, leaning in close to her again, his nostrils flaring at the sweet smell of her sweat as he felt a raw tingle at the base of his spine and nudged her legs further apart.

"That's not an answer," she said, her voice fading to a husky whisper as she felt his lean, hard body press against hers, pushing her against against her built-in bookshelf. In any other circumstance, it might've been an uncomfortable position. In most circumstances, it _would've _been an uncomfortable position. However, as he leaned into her, Brennan felt her heart skip a beat as Booth continued to ratchet up the charm, and she could feel the heat radiating off of his body. _Why does he always do that? _the thought echoed sharply in Brennan's mind. _Just when I have him exactly where I want him, he always does that. _A heartbeat later, a softer and more feminine voice added, _He does it because it always works, Brennan. And, he knows it. That's why he does it. _"But, I—" Brennan weakly protested.

"Nuh-uh," he said again, lowering his face as he brushed his lips against her other earlobe.

Brennan squirmed slightly as she felt his lips tickle her flesh. She closed her eyes as her nose filled with the smell of him, a musky scent swirling with sweat and spice—and want.

"Booth..."

"Nuh-uh," he groaned a third time. Brennan sighed as Booth kissed her softly, and he smiled. _Yeah, I've just about got her_—

However, just to be on the safe side, he continued lathering on the charm. "No more thinking," he murmured, pressing his groin against her hip as he began kissing his way down the soft skin of her neck. "For someone who said that I'm the one with the big mouth, you're the one who seems to have the problem shutting up, Bones. So, no more talking." As if she had decided to comply with his words, Booth felt her hands move up the sides of his arms, her slender fingers tracing over his biceps, encouraging him in his actions. "Definitely, no more talking."

Brennan mewled as she tilted her head back, her hair falling away from her neck as his lips skimmed along her collarbone towards the notch at the base of her neck. When she felt his lips begin to suck a moist trail across the softness of her skin, the wave of pleasure that washed over her made her knees go weak. She fell against him lightly, forced to bolster herself by placing her hands on either of his shoulders.

"You okay there, Bones?" Booth laughed, when he glanced down at where she had put her hands.

Swallowing, a dazed look had settled over her as she slowly nodded. "Ummm...unless we're going to have sex with you pressing me up against my bookcase or the front door," Brennan suddenly managed to say in one quick verbal salvo. "I would suggest we find some horizontal surface that can aid in achieving a desirable sexual position, Booth."

Booth grunted as he briefly considered how absolutely hot it would be to take her against her front door or the foyer wall. He seriously doubted whether he could get enough leverage against the bookcase, but it might be worth a try anyway—

"So, does that mean what I think it means, Bones?" Booth laughed at her. "No more Q&A?"

"Yes," she moaned. "For now, at least. But, if we're going to have sex right now, you're going to have to help me regain my equilibrium, Booth, because, for some reason, I seem to be experiencing a degeneration in the muscular control of in the vicinity of my _mobile trocho-ginglymus,_ and I'm not certain I can successfully demonstrate flexion or extension muscular movement at the moment."

Booth pulled back from her for a moment, an indulgent grin on his face as he chuckled, "What?"

"Knees—" Brennan groaned, wobbling a bit at the loss of Booth's support.

At this, Booth's chuckle deepened into a satisfied rumble as he told her, "Is that your way of telling me that I make you go weak in the knees, Bones?"

"Although I can't explain why, yes," Brennan said, with a look. "Now, do you have a preference—couch or bed?"

"Bed," Booth grunted, moving towards her with a hungry glint in his eye. "Definitely the bed." Pulling her to him again, Booth tugged at the hem of the back of her T-shirt. "I think this is the third time I've done this without actually getting it off you today, Bones."

Taking a breath, Brennan edged her torso away from where he held her. Booth's left leg thrust between each of hers as his hands rested lightly near the small of her back on the swell just above her ass. As she arched her back to give her enough room to move, Brennan hastily reached down and pulled the sweaty T-shirt over her head with both hands. Tossing it over Booth's shoulder, now clad in her sports bra, jogging pants, and sneakers, she still felt overdressed. And, more importantly, she felt that Booth was definitely wearing too much clothing.

Her hands migrating to the waistband of his sweats, Brennan tugged at the elastic slightly when a slightly evil thought crossed her mind. More used to him in jeans or suit pants or even ACU trousers, the novelty of Booth standing before her in a pair of sweats with an elastic waistband tickled her. The possibilities danced through her mind as she let her hands linger at the waistband, pulling it taut against his hips before allowing it to fall tight against his pelvis. The third time that she did it, she let it snap hard against his skin causing Booth to yelp in surprise.

"Ouch," Booth growled at her. "That was definitely not a nice thing to do, Bones."

She gave him a wicked grin, waggled her eyebrows, and then moved. Suddenly, and quite thankfully, Brennan seemed to have recovered sufficient mobility in her legs, because when she gave them the command to sprint forward and away from Booth, they complied, and the chase was on. She made it as far as the doorway of her bedroom before she felt Booth's arms snake around her waist.

"You should know by now," he said, his breath now coming in pants, "that, in the end, you can never outrun me." She laughed as he twirled her around and pulled her body against his. "Ever." Booth leaned in and kissed her, grasping at her mouth with his lips as he felt her tongue slide against his.

He cupped her ass with his hands and pressed her hip against his groin so she could feel how much he wanted her. "You make me so damn crazy, woman," he said as he walked her backwards through the doorway towards the bed.

"I thought we were going to have have a sexual encounter, Booth," Brennan teased him. "If so, I find you to be wearing far too much clothing for such an activity to take place in such a way as it might achieve the optimum amount of satisfaction for both of us," she whispered between his kisses as she toed off her sneakers. She reached down and yanked the hem at the bottom of his faded FBI T-shirt. With a wry smile, he raised his arms as she pulled it off and tossed it carelessly to the side.

"So are you," he growled playfully, hooking his fingers over the waistband of her stretchy black jogging pants. He leaned in and gently nipped at her earlobe with his teeth as he tugged on her pants, slowly inching them over her curvy hips. "Off," he moaned. "Now, right, now. Off they come, Bones."

"As long at they aren't the only thing that come, I'm okay with that, Booth. Ohhh, damn," she moaned as the tip of his tongue stroked the tender skin just below her ear. "_Ohhh_..." She pulled away from him, causing him to grunt in brief protest as she nudged his hands away and slid her pants off her hips.

Booth watched her with hungry eyes, shiny and black as volcanic glass, as she stepped out of her pants. As soon as she kicked them to the side and slid her anklet socks off her feet, he moved in again, running his hands up her back and over her bare shoulder blades. "God, I want you," he whispered, his hot breath tickling her jaw. "I can't imagine a time when I'll never not want you."

She responded with a deep groan as she reached up and pulled her sports bra off and over her head. No sooner had the sweat-damp gray Lycra hit the floor then Booth's eager hands flew up to cup her breasts.

"Bones," he said, giving each breast a gentle squeeze as he brushed his thumbs across her nipples. Brennan felt a rush of wet warmth pulse between her legs at his touch and wobbled a little as her knees nearly gave way again.

"Bed," she growled, surprised at the hint of roughness in her voice. "Now, now would be a _really _good time to go to the bed."

With a silent nod, Booth dropped his hands to her hips and walked her backwards before pushing her gently onto the bed. Brennan crawled back towards the headboard with a smirk, as if daring Booth to chase her. She grinned as he accepted the silent dare, climbing onto the bed and stalking towards her on all fours. He reached for her, stroking his hand up the side of her leg before sliding his fingers under the hem of her soaked panties.

"Wait," she said, rolling to the side and away from his touch. A playful edge came into her voice. "Don't you want breakfast? I promised you earlier, breakfast, remember? I said I'd make you that big breakfast—eggs, English muffins, bacon even—" she asked with a sly smile.

"No way," he replied huskily. "Right now, screw breakfast. I want my dessert first. Breakfast can wait. Now, get over here." He curled his hand around her hip and pulled her back toward him. A deep, throaty laugh escaped from her lips as Booth tugged at her panties, yanking them off her hips and sliding them down her slender, creamy thighs. "Oh, yeah," he groaned as he tossed the damp fabric to the floor and nestled himself between her thighs. He stroked his hand up the inside of her thigh and felt her tremble slightly in response to his touch.

"No fair," she yelped as he bent his head down and began placing wet, sucking kisses along her collarbone. "Booth, stop that."

"Make me," he growled.

"You know I hate it when you tease me," Brennan's voice trailed off.

"You should've thought of that before," Booth told her.

"Well, at least be fair," Brennan said.

"What?" he asked, more out of habit than because he actually had any intention to follow through with whatever Brennan wanted him to do. _Unless it involves me penetrating you...ummm, now. Yup. Right now, Bones. Everything else_—_screw it._

"Be fair," Brennan murmured again. "Your clothes?"

"What about them?" Booth grunted, biting back a smile as he knew what she wanted now, and in this, he was more than willing to give her exactly what she asked for, since it was what he wanted, too.

"You still have too many clothes on," she said, slipping her fingers underneath the waistband of his sweats and briefs. Hooking her thumbs over them, she quickly slid them off his hips and cupped his ass with her hands.

Booth laughed. "Wait," he whispered as he reached back and slid out of his sweats and underwear, kicking them off of his feet with an awkward wiggle.

"Don't keep me waiting here, Booth," she said with a smile, licking her lips in anticipation.

"Huh," was all he said as he hovered over her, hissing quietly as his firm arousal brushed against the silky skin of her stomach.

He leaned over and coasted his hand over her, skimming his fingers over the delicate structure of her collarbone, the gentle rise above her breasts, the slender roundness of her creamy white shoulders, and between her breasts down the flat plane of her stomach to her navel. Booth drew faint circles over her belly as he watched her squirm ever so slightly under his ministrations. He couldn't help but smile as it became apparent that the lighter his touch, the more she struggled to remain still. He winced as the tingle at the base of his spine grew more intense, and he felt himself get harder as he watched her respond to his caresses.

"Bones," he whispered, bringing his hand up her side before cupping her jaw, brushing his calloused right thumb over her high cheekbone. She opened her eyes, heavy-lidded as they were with desire, and looked deeply into his own dark brown eyes.

"Booth," she moaned softly.

Booth pursed his lips and smiled at her as he stroked his hand lightly over her forehead.

"Bones," he whispered. "Before we...before we do this, I need to know—are we good?" he asked her quietly, a quiver of uncertainty in his voice.

She held his gaze for a moment, seeing the pain, guilt and uncertainty there, and then slowly nodded. "I love you," she said. "I know that some would think me saying that to you or you saying that to me is some magic panacea to right all the wrongs that have ever happened between us, Booth. But, I love you...and yes," she said softly with a smile and a slight nod, "we're good."

She reached up, placed her hands on his hips, and pulled him to her. Booth lost his balance at the sudden movement and let out a grunted _oomph_ as he fell against her. Quickly righting his position, Brennan watched him in amusement. She laughed as he shifted in bed to regain his stance. At the sound of her laugh, Booth's head shot up, and he gave her a look of feigned hurt. She smiled again and said, "Come on, clumsy."

"I'm not clumsy," Booth muttered. "I'm many things, Bones, but definitely _not _clumsy."

She widened her grin, extending her hands to him in supplication. "Fine, then prove it, Booth, Prove me wrong," she moaned as she felt his hot breath tickle an errant strand of sweat-damp hair against her forehead.

Booth closed his eyes and smiled, a sigh of relief passing between his lips before bringing them to Brennan's. No sooner had his lips brushed against hers than he felt her tongue stroke against his lower lip, inviting him to open his mouth to her. They kissed, gently and almost tentatively for the first few moments, then a low rumble sounded from deep within Booth's chest as he pressed his body against hers, their mouths grasping for one another with a desperation and a heat that eclipsed that which had washed over them as they embraced in the Rock Creek parking lot just an hour or so earlier.

"Booth," she moaned again, pleadingly, as she cupped her hands over his ass and pulled him against her. Her chest heaving and her skin flushed and hot, she brought one of her hands across his hip and wrapped her fingers around his stiff arousal.

"Bones..."

"I need...you, God, Booth. Now, right now—" she panted. "I—" Her words were cut off as he covered her mouth with a demanding, hungry kiss. Just as suddenly, he pulled his lips away, leaving her breathless as he urged her to let go of him with a gentle shove of his forearm.

"Love you," he said as he looked down on her with a smile, his brown eyes burning dark with want. "You know that right? Always you—just you."

"I know," she replied, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "I know that."

"Do you?" Booth asked, pure honesty burning in his eyes. "Do you really?"

"As much as I know that I love you."

Hearing those words from her lips filled Booth with a sense of relief and joy that sent a surge of warmth through his chest. He took a breath and, looking into her pale eyes—which now glistened somewhat darker with a look that made him even harder as he held her gaze—he entered her with a single, smooth stroke.

"Bo-o-o-onness..." he groaned as he lost himself completely in the tight, wet, silky warmth of her. He withdrew slightly, then slowly pressed into her again. "Oh, God—"

Brennan opened her mouth but found herself unable to form words as she arched her back and met each of his strokes with an upward thrust of her hips. A gasp fell away from her mouth each time they moved, a short husky sigh that seemed to provide the perfect soundtrack for their exertions. They fell into a smooth, reciprocating rhythm, and as they moved together, the room echoed with the sound of her moans, his groans, and the heavy rise and fall of their collective breathing.

With each of his strokes, her breaths became more shallow and her moans louder, until the tight coil in her belly signaled that she had arrived at the edge of release. It happened quickly, almost too quickly for her brain to catch up with the familiar responses of her body. But, glancing down at her, Booth watched her eyes darken as her pupils dilated, then drew his hips back and pressed into her, holding himself deeply inside of her as he felt her tighten and then flutter around him.

"Boooothh..." she moaned, arching her back one last time as she felt his warm release inside of her.

"Oh, yeah," he whispered, grunting more than he'd intended into her. He struggled for breath, holding his weight on either side of her, and looking down into her eyes, he smiled. "God, I love you," he said, as he bent his head to kiss her.

Brennan smiled at him in that moment, her skin flushed and radiant with the release of her orgasm. She tilted her head up to meet his, and they locked eyes once more, happy and pleased that, at last, they finally seemed to be on the same page of the same book at the same time—and it was incredible.

* * *

><p>Sometime later, Brennan was dozing in a wonderful swathe of comfortable lethargy. While Booth lay replete on his back, nodding off with his head turned on the pillow away from her, Brennan had draped herself over his broad chest. A small part of her mind, the very tiny part that was still capable of rational thought, grumbled that she would have to change the bedsheets again today. Between their frequent sexual encounters, coupled with the fact that they had just ended up in bed after a sweaty and vigorous jog in the park that had been chaotic in more ways than one, meant that the sheets were definitely going to need to be changed.<p>

_Booth's turn_, she thought with a groggy yawn, happily ignoring the fact that he was changing his bedding when they ended up at his apartment just as much as she did at hers. _Don't care,_ Brennan thought to herself with a small smile. _I did it last time. It's his turn, now._

Grinning slightly, she shifted her ass to burrow more tightly against Booth's, and was just about to let sleep claim her when a sudden thought pop into her mind.

_He never answered my question_, Brennan abruptly realized. _He...I can't believe he did that. He used that damn charm of his to try to get out of answering my question. _ She stopped, her eyes suddenly snapping open, and her ire piqued as she glanced up and saw Booth peacefully resting without a seeming care in the world. Pursing her lips together, Brennan shifted her jaw from left to right, and then nodded, her decision made.

Pressing her hip against his, Brennan gave him a quick, but definitive, shake.

"Mmmmmm..." came the mumbled response.

Her brow furrowing again, Brennan thrust her hip more forcefully against his as she said, "Booth."

At the sound of her calling his name, Booth reluctantly cracked open one eye.

"Hmmmm?"

"Wake up," Brennan said, it being clear that she was now not going to allow herself—or him—the luxury of an extended post-sex nap.

"Why?" he grumbled. "Sleepy."

"Nuh uh," Brennan said, quite pleased with herself as she tossed Booth's own words back at him. "Wake up."

With a sigh that quickly transitioned into a yawn, Booth reluctantly cracked open both of his eyes. "Fine," he yawned again. Looking at her, his throat rough with sleep, Booth muttered, "But, first, tell me why I'm not being allowed to go back to sleep again?"

Shifting, Brennan sat up in bed, and narrowed her eyes as she said, "You do know I have an eidetic memory, correct?"

"Is that some super-squint term for you never forgetting anything?" Booth asked.

"The more common term is photographic memory, although that's not a holistically accurate descriptor, yes," Brennan said, with a sharp nod.

"Then, yes," Booth yawned again. "Why?"

"So, if you know I have an eidetic memory, and never forget anything—"

"Just like an elephant, ehh, Bones?" Booth chuckled.

Brennan stared for a moment and then shook her head. "I'm not certain what my memory has in common with the _Elephantidae _family. Although they are an extremely long-lived species for a mammal, with an average life span of 50 to 70 years, there are no studies that I am aware of that indicate elephants of either the _Elephas _genus or _Loxodonta _genus have comparable memory skills to_ Homo sapiens—_"

Shaking his head, Booth chuckled and said, "Never mind, Bones." Free from the pressure of Brennan's body pressing down on his chest, Booth took the opportunity to shift slightly in bed and sit up so that his back was bolstered by her headboard. "So, what didn't you forget that you want to bring up to torment me with now, Bones?" he grinned at her.

Narrowing her eyes, not surprised at how well he knew her, even if there was still a small part of doubt that lingered in her mind about how well she knew him, Brennan said, "You never answered my question."

Looking at her, Booth smiled and said, "No, I didn't."

"I didn't forget, Booth," Brennan replied. "I just chose not to press the issue when you were being rather creative—and, admittedly, persuasive—in your attempts to distract me."

"I never thought you would, Bones," Booth laughed.

"So, does that mean you're not going to answer me?" Brennan asked.

"No," Booth told her. "I have an answer for you, but I don't think it's going to be a very satisfying one for you."

"Try me," Brennan replied. "You might be surprised."

Booth nodded. "Okay." He paused for a few seconds and then said, "So, you want to know what makes you so different from all other blondes I've ever been attracted to or dated or...whatever, right?"

"If by 'whatever', you are implying the creation of sexual relationships, then, yes," Brennan said.

Booth arched an eyebrow, but then continued. "Okay, so here it is, Bones. The reason I was always into those type of girls is just, well, because that's what appealed to me. But, you...with you, there was never a question of appeal, Bones. For you, it was—well, it's kinda hard to explain. I know I tried to tell you that one night—"

His voice trailed off, and Brennan merely nodded, neither of them wanting to bring up the more painful aspects of their past unless absolutely necessary.

"But, anyway," Booth continued. "With you, it was never about appeal. With you, right from the start, it was always so much more. I—I never made a conscious choice to be attracted to you or to fall in love with you, Bones. It just happened. It was like a reflex...like breathing. I didn't make the conscious choice, because there wasn't a choice to be made. I just knew, Bones, right from the very start that you were it for me and none of those other women could ever hold a candle to you—because you're you, and they weren't. I just knew." His hand snaked out to clasp hers in a soft caress. "Does that answer your question?"

"No, not really—" Brennan began.

Booth laughed at this, a twinkle in his eye as he said, "See, I told you you wouldn't like the answer I had for you. It's not logical enough, huh?"

"No, it's not," Brennan said. "But, that doesn't mean it's not true...because, here we are, right?" She looked at him and smiled as she said, "I suppose I am just going to have to take your word on some things, Booth—this being one of them that I'm sure will be the first of many."

"You mean, you're going to have to take some things on faith, there, ehhh, Bones?" Booth chuckled.

Shaking her head, Brennan leaned in to kiss him, and said softly, "I wouldn't press your luck on that one, Booth." And, when they leaned in and met in a very sweet, very gentle kiss that carried with it the promise of many things yet to come for the pair, both of them already knew that they had both pressed their luck, and won, and were more happy for how things had turned out than either one would ever be willing to say.

* * *

><p>~The End~<p>

* * *

><p><span>AN2:So, there it is. What does everyone think? We know it can be tempting to let a final chapter go unreviewed, particularly if you've already left a comment on an earlier chapter. However, please don't leave us hanging. Please, please, please take pity and let us know how we did. Click that little 'review' button., don't forget to let us know of what you thought of the ending. Was it realistic? Not so much? Hot? Not? Give us a shout out and let us know if all the angst we put you through was worth the pay off. Until then, thanks for reading!


End file.
